Cape Town - An immediate audit of how many schools in the province have received their textbooks and other learning material should be commissioned, the ANC in the Western Cape says.
This comes after Maitland High pupils protested over textbook shortages at their school and reports of shortfalls at Gordon High School in Somerset West.
“Those who are responsible for these delays, clearly blind to how much damage they are doing to the development of children and their precious futures, must be brought to book and condemned,” the ANC said in a statement.
Jessica Shelver, the spokeswoman for Education MEC Debbie Schäfer, said it was not the responsibility of the Western Cape Education Department’s (WCED) provincial office to identify textbook shortages.
In a statement on Wednesday, Schäfer said all schools in the province had an opportunity to order top-up textbooks online from July 21 to August 15 last year for use this year.
“A preliminary investigation, in the case of Maitland High School has revealed that in the July/August ordering period, orders were placed by the school, and there was a glitch on the WCED online ordering system which resulted in the order not showing up online.”
The glitch has since been fixed.
She said schools were then given an opportunity to order additional top-up textbooks between February 10 and 16 this year.
She said the school’s order had been placed after this deadline.
Cape Times