The Western Cape is the only province to have had 100 percent of textbooks delivered to schools this year.
|||Cape Town - THE Western Cape is the only province to have had 100 percent of textbooks delivered to schools this year.
This was one of the findings made by a South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) investigation into the delivery of books across the country, according to an interim report of proceedings.
Reasons for that included the Western Cape’s use of a centralised procurement system and an electronic system to record and monitor the status of book deliveries.
A key concern was that some provinces operated on an electronic system, while others used a paper-based system – resulting in inequality in monitoring and tracking mechanisms.
The Department of Basic Education and the nine education MECs were summoned to an investigative hearing by the SAHRC last month, after reports of non-delivery in Limpopo and the Eastern Cape.
During these hearings it was found that the Western Cape was the only province to have 100 percent of books delivered in December and February.
The Eastern Cape and Northern Cape appeared to have the lowest delivery of books.
Certain challenges had been faced in a number of provinces regarding delivery of books in previous years. These included:
l Not all schools were able to make accurate projections of how many pupils would enroll in each grade in the following year.
l Schools placed their orders late, or with errors, or did not place orders at all.
l Schools did not ensure that what was delivered to the school was correct.
The investigation had found that the Department of Basic Education had taken a number of steps to ensure books were delivered on time for this school year. Some of these were:
l A “mopping-up” process had been undertaken by all provinces to ensure that shortages were remedied and that books were delivered to schools that had not received them.
l Electronic systems were implemented in the Western Cape, the Northern Cape, Mpumalanga and Gauteng to increase efficiency.
l Call centres were established in the Free State, Limpopo and the Eastern Cape to ensure that shortages could be reported.
michelle.jones@inl.co.za
Cape Times