Minister Motshekga must urgently intervene in textbook crisis

Reports today indicate that learners in at least three provinces are without textbooks, despite it being five months into the school year.

This is an absolute disgrace.

Minister of Basic Education Angie Motshekga must take urgent action to ensure that those schools that remain without textbooks have the resources they need to resume normal teaching.

Examples of the textbook crisis in our schools include:

• The situation in the Free State education system has been described as "chaos", with schools in at least three areas not having received a single book yet this year;
• In KwaZulu Natal, poor schools without textbooks are having to spend thousands on photocopying books for learners;
• Schools in Limpopo have received the wrong books, and have resorted to asking learners' parents to donate money to help pay for photocopies to be made of the correct books; and

In the Eastern Cape, three tons of new school books have been dumped at a warehouse for recycling- despite large numbers of pupils in the province being without books.

The textbook crisis across large parts of the country can be largely attributed to the financial and administrative disarray in a number of provincial education departments. The Minister must not only address the immediate problem of textbook shortages, but must also prove to Parliament and the South African people that she is committed to addressing the chaos in these departments.

I will be submitting a series of parliamentary questions to the Minister to determine:

• Why no disciplinary action has been taken against those officials responsible for the collapse of the Limpopo education department's finances, and what emergency steps have been put in place to get the Limpopo education department's finances back on track;
• How it happened that tons of useable school books were dumped in the Eastern Cape, in the face of a severe textbook shortage in the province; and
• What steps are being taken to vet the companies added to the Eastern Cape education department's list of registered suppliers, after principals in the province raised concerns that some of the suppliers had no legitimate premises and were charging schools excessively high prices.

Each day that learners and teachers go without the resources they need impacts the quality of education our children receive.

If we are to build a future in which all children have access to the opportunities they deserve to live lives they value, every hour spent in the classroom must be used effectively.

Minister Motshekga must take full responsibility for ensuring that teachers and learners are equipped with the necessary resources to make sure this happens.

Statement issued by Annette Lovemore, DA Shadow Minister of Basic Education, May 13 2012

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