Court orders EC education department to deliver textbooks by end of March

The Eastern Cape High Court in Makhanda has ordered the provincial department of basic education to ensure “every pupil at every public school” gets stationery and textbooks by the end of this month.

Thousands were left without these basics for the first two months of the current academic year because of an “unprecedented budget shortfall”.

The court on Tuesday heard an urgent application from Khula Community Development Project – represented by the Legal Resources Centre (LRC) – filed against the department last month.

“There is no way that a child can learn properly without stationery and without textbooks,” the LRC had said in its submissions, pointing to supporting affidavits from parents who were “barely surviving financially” and couldn’t afford stationery, and teachers who spoke of the tens of thousands of rands it cost monthly to photocopy textbooks.

In a 12 January memorandum titled “Provision of Learner Teacher Support Material (LTSM) to Schools”, the department blamed the delay on an “unprecedented budget shortfall” which had “affected delivery of LTSM both in terms of adhering to the nationally prescribed timelines and also the times determination of
quantities of LTSM per grade per child”.

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The LRC argued that the memorandum did not explain the link between budget shortfalls and an inability to determine the required quantities of LTSM per grade.

“Nor does it explain what it means by the budget shortfall and why it is ‘unprecedented’.”

Early last month, the department issued a notice assuring all schools should have received all stationery consignments by the end of February and that textbooks would be delivered between March and May.

The LRC said that by the time it went to court late last month, it was evident the department would not
meet the deadline. There was further “no detail” regarding when stationery deliveries would be made to schools, it went on, and even if the department made this deadline, pupils would be without textbooks for half the school year.

Department head Dr Naledi Mbude in papers filed, apologised unreservedly. She indicated the department would deliver all the outstanding stationery by the end of this week but asked if it could have until the end of next month to deliver the outstanding textbooks.

The court refused. In its ruling, it also declared the right to a basic education included the right of each pupil to be provided with textbooks and stationery. It further declared as unconstitutional the department’s failure to provide this for all children by the start of the academic year.

– bernadettew@citizen.co.za