The high court in Makhanda on Tuesday ordered the Eastern Cape education department to ensure every pupil at all public schools in the province is provided with textbooks and stationery by no later than March 31.
The department had been hauled before the court by Khula Development Forum that was concerned about scores of pupils without learning material as the first school term comes to an end.
The forum was represented by the Legal Resource Centre (LRC), which launched an urgent application with the court, saying the failure by the department to provide textbooks was an infringement of pupils’ rights.
Provincial education departmental head Dr Naledi Mbude had said in an affidavit that though the department had delivered stationery to about 99% of the province’s 5,080 schools, they would only have all their textbooks by the end of April, providing book publishers were able to deliver these to the department’s central warehouse in East London by then, the Daily Dispatch reported.
See the full report here.
In a statement posted when the LRC launched the legal action, it said the education department had blamed budgetary constraints for failing to provide the material.
The department had reportedly said stationery would be delivered to all schools by the end of February but said textbooks would only be delivered between March and May.
The LRC had argued that pupils needed stationery to write and perform almost all their academic tasks and need textbooks to follow the curriculum.
It submitted to the court that “delivering textbooks to schools a few weeks before midyear exams is a serious failure by the department”.
The LRC said the delay in providing study material would have a terrible impact on schools, pupils and parents.
“This massive administrative bungling follows immediately on from two years of major learning losses due to the Covid-19 pandemic. It also has a disproportionately negative impact on no-fee paying schools which depend entirely on the state to fund every aspect of pupils’ education. These schools are usually located in less affluent areas where parents are not able to contribute much financially to their children’s educational needs,” the LRC said.
So bad was the situation that in some schools teachers resorted to using their own money to buy stationery for pupils who could not afford to buy their own while they wait for the department. Teachers also had to make provision for pupils by making copies of textbooks.
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