Textbook challenge for officials
LOW numbers of textbooks were being returned to schools by pupils at the end of each year, costing provincial education departments millions of extra rands.
KZN Education MEC Peggy Nkonyeni urged teachers, parents and pupils yesterday to care for, and hand back, learning material.
The cost of providing new textbooks meant that, in the senior grades, not every pupil in KZN had a textbook of their own for every subject.
Nkonyeni announced that 80 percent of the textbooks and stationery bought for the new school year, with a budget of R269 million, had already been delivered to schools.
While so-called section 21 schools may buy their own textbooks, section 20 schools in KZN have learning resources bought and delivered to them by service providers contracted to the provincial department.
The delivery of workbooks is the responsibility of the national Basic Education Department.
Earlier this year the KZN Education Department announced that it would procure and distribute textbooks without the help of a third party, after a dispute was lodged by the unsuccessful bidders for the contract. However, the dispute was quickly resolved and Ndabase Printing Solutions was appointed.
Nkonyeni admitted that at some point the department had panicked about whether or not it would have the textbooks and stationery delivered by the deadline. However, she was confident that by Friday next week the job would be done.
Nkonyeni said 200 SMMEs had been subcontracted to assist with the deliveries to schools.
Speaking on the cost and availability of textbooks, she said her department’s “main challenge” was that textbooks were not being returned by pupils and had to be replaced.
Nkosinathi Sishi, KwaZuluNatal education head of department, remarked that where schools did not have a textbook for every pupil in every subject, it was not because of non-delivery, but because of limited funds.
This was particularly true for high schools, where there was a wide range of subject choices.
Retrieval
Sishi said that a single textbook should have a lifespan of five years.
Elijah Mhlanga, spokesman for the national department, said that the rate of textbook retrieval in the country was low.
“Parents, learners and schools are urged to safeguard this huge investment by taking good care of the loaned textbooks and by returning these textbooks to schools at the end of each school year,” Mhlanga said.
Yesterday also marked the opening of the R37 million Eric Mtshali Secondary School in Pinetown by Nkonyeni, and the launch of a 54-page training guide for matric exam script markers.