Who’s to blame for late delivery?
WE are fast approaching the end of the first school term, and a hot topic is still the lack of delivery of school books and stationery.
This is despite the claim by the education department officials at the start of the year that everything was under control.
Later, The Herald quoted one of the top officials who claimed that the orders had all been in by December 15 (“Department faces probe for failure to deliver textbooks”, March 8).
This claim shows that the high-ranking officials who made the claim are clueless about their jobs and also provides the clue to where the blame for the delay may lie.
First, any order submitted on December 15 for anything in this country is doomed – nothing more so than school textbooks.
Half the country shuts down from December 15 if it has not already shut down on the 15th to celebrate Christmas or end of year functions.
This is made worse by the fact that the textbooks order from the Eastern Cape last year was bigger than that of any other province as it was a corrective order and not the usual top-up order.
The part of the total order placed on December 15 could easily have been as large as a full order in some previous years.
The information on these orders had to be captured by a skeleton staff of data capturers from Monday December 19 to Friday December 23, when the second half of the country shuts down until, at the earliest, January 3.
A week later schools reopen, and education department officials expect all books and stationery to be in the schools. Considering the size of the order, it would probably take a couple of weeks before the data could be sent to the publishers.
Publishers, who have had their fingers burnt before, do not start printing books for state schools until the orders are finalised.
The printing, binding and boxing of the textbooks take at least six weeks, according to one of the publishers.
Similarly, stationery providers do not stock up on or manufacture stationery until they know the size of their orders.
Textbooks and stationery then need to be delivered to schools across the 170 000km² of the Eastern Cape.
This cannot be done in dribs and drabs because of the excessively high costs, so delivery starts when everything is ready for delivery so that each area is only visited once.
From January 3 this process would take a minimum of 10 weeks, assuming everything runs smoothly for the printers, so it may be safe to say it takes 12 weeks which means the books should be delivered this week!
Who is to blame for the annual repetition of this complete mess?
There are three levels to which blame can be attributed – the province, the district or the school.
The Eastern Cape department of education, if at all organised, should have had clearly defined deadlines for the process.
If not, it is entirely to blame for the fiasco.
If there were deadlines, it can transfer the blame to the district offices that submitted their orders late, bearing in mind that it should have been monitoring the submissions from district offices.
This means the provincial and district officials may need to share the blame.
The district offices can lay the blame on the school principals who made late submissions, but may also have to share the blame for not following up on the orders.
Proper records and checks on the dates of the submission of the orders by all parties can allow district and provincial offices to name and shame those that have been tardy.
Some of the principals and school communities that are now complaining of late deliveries may need to look at the date of their submissions of orders to the district offices before saying too much.
It is fairly likely that some of them are responsible for late and incorrect orders.
Let us hope that, before the end of this year, a miracle occurs and our provincial officials report to the press that all the provincial orders are submitted to the data capturers by September 15 (or whatever date the publishers set) and not December 15.
Former school principal (name provided), Port Elizabeth