Thousands of pupils in Limpopo will start school next year with no new textbooks because the education department did not order any.
After senior figures in the publishing industry alerted the Mail & Guardian to this impending crisis, the department this week confirmed its failure to order new books. But it blamed the Cabinet’s decision to place it under national administration about three weeks ago.
However a publisher, who asked not to be named, told the M&G that provinces started ordering textbooks in October. “Most provinces should’ve ordered from October to mid-November, so Limpopo had an opportunity to order earlier as well.” He said Limpopo used a weak excuse for slipping up.
With three weeks to go before schools reopen, Limpopo is the only province that has “not ordered a single textbook for 2012”, said the publisher.
Said another: “If a province has not ordered by now, there’s not much that can be done to ensure schools have textbooks when they reopen.”
This is because it usually takes between four and six weeks after departments place orders for textbooks to be delivered to schools.
Although some pupils might be able to use old textbooks, it is not an option for the four grades in which the new curriculum is due to be phased in next year, making new textbooks essential.
“No pupils in grades one, two, three or 10 in Limpopo will have textbooks for the new curriculum, which gets implemented in January,” the first publisher said. “The result is that thousands of pupils will be at a severe disadvantage when the school year begins, especially when one considers the prescriptive nature of the new curriculum.”
Limpopo has more than 1.7-million pupils in about 4 000 public schools. A primary school principal in Ga-Mothapo village, close to Mankweng, said: “The stationery has been delivered but not textbooks … When we open, everything must be in order and we must not wait for textbooks to start teaching.”
The spokesperson for the province’s education department, Pat Kgomo, confirmed it had ordered no books. “We acknowledge that the present state of affairs may delay the normal delivery of textbooks to schools,” he said.
“The Limpopo department of education, like all other provincial departments of education, budgeted for the textbooks, taking into account the introduction of it [the new curriculum] in 2012. However, the declaration of section 100(1)b by Cabinet [putting some provincial departments under administration] has affected the process of acquisition of the textbooks.”
The department was now working with the national government “to ensure that textbooks are delivered as early as possible in 2012”, Kgomo said.