Staff Reporter

The Western Cape Education Department is at loggerheads with a local student rights group over a shortage of textbooks at two Khayelitsha schools.

With matric exams less than three months away, many pupils at Chris Hani and Kwamfundo high schools in Khayelitsha still do not have textbooks, says lobby group Equal Education.

Those with textbooks had to share with their peers.

Equal Education representatives wrote a letter of demand to the Western Cape Education Department insisting that matric pupils at the two schools be provided with textbooks.

It threatened to lodge an urgent application in the Western Cape High Court if the department failed to meet its demands.

The Western Cape government hit back, saying it was the schools' responsibility to manage textbooks.

A statement released by the department said that, in terms of national policy, schools received funding to buy their textbooks.

They had to plan adequately to assess textbook requirements, and put a retention strategy in place to ensure that textbooks were returned at the end of the school year.

"It seems that Equal Education has failed to grasp how important it is for individual schools to take responsibility for their textbook management, and that every effort is being made by this administration to ensure that schools are text-rich environments," the department said.

It added that it provided an additional 15 000 core subject textbooks to Grade 12 pupils this year in a top-up programme, and allocated an additional R101 million for textbooks throughout the system.

"We are also in the process of finalising an unprecedented second top-up programme for Grade 12 learners to identify where there may still be textbook shortages."

Any shortages were "very much the exception, and represent a fraction of the total".

However, Equal Education says department billboards in Khayelitsha urge every learner to have a textbook for each and every subject.

natasha.prince@inl.co.za