Thousands of Eastern Cape schools opened for the new school year late last month without essential stationery, including basics such as pencils and paper.
A lack of planning by the province’s education department is to blame for the blunder.
“We acknowledge that the process of delivering stationery was carried out too late,” said Mkhangeli Matomela, Eastern Cape education minister. The R59-million stationery tender was awarded to successful bidders only on December 20, long after schools had closed for the holidays. The stationery could only be delivered on January 17, when teachers in the province returned to their schools, making it impossible for the province’s 6 500 schools to receive materials before they reopened.
But Matomela’s promise that schools would receive their stationery by the end of January has also been broken. Mxolisi Dimaza, representative of the South African Democratic Teachers’ Union in the Eastern Cape, said that a week into February “there are still schools that have not received stationery and textbooks. Even those schools that have received materials have only received half [of what they need].”
The director of communication for the Eastern Cape education department, Gay Khaile, disputed this, saying that only about 2% of schools were still waiting.
Problems with the school nutrition programme also continue to plague the province. Glitches have included the failure of the provincial education department to pay food suppliers and an unworkable administrative system.
Said Dimaza: “Some learners receive meals only three times a week. Some don’t even get the food. As a result, a number of learners whose parents are unemployed cannot go to school and those who do come are hungry.”
Khaile said the department is working on solutions such as a new management system, and putting out new tenders for suppliers in March.
Questions persist about the quality of education in the Eastern Cape. Matric pass rates dropped from 60% in 2003 to just 53, 5% in 2004, making it the province with the lowest pass rate in the country. Nine schools did not have a single student who passed and 23 other schools recorded a 10% pass rate.