The Federation of Governing Bodies of SA Schools has laid a complaint against the Eastern Cape Education Department at the Human Rights Commission.
It says the department has failed yet again to deliver teaching and learning support material in time for the start of the school year.
Juané van der Merwe from FEDSAS said:
The reasons provided by the Eastern Cape department once again are poor planning and the fact that they have budgetary shortfalls.
The Federation said that this was one of the motivations why they have also decided to lay a charge.
The provision of learning material is very much crucial to the basic human rights of children and pivotal in their experience as well.
This act by Eastern Cape Education infringes on those rights and is detrimental to the development of the children affected by this.
For instance, in the previous year, the Eastern Cape had a matric pass rate second-lowest in South Africa, with the province recording a pass rate of 68.1%.
The schools in the Eastern Cape province affected solely depend on the department for Learning and Teaching Support Material (LTSM) as they don’t have additional funds to purchase those materials.
Van De Merwe further said:
With schools being on a rotational (timetable) or learners attending school on a rotational basis without having the necessary learning and teaching material, without having textbooks, there's no way the learning and teaching can take place in the schools and that's absolutely a gross violation of those learners' rights to education.
The Federation hopes that this action will speed up the process and for the Human Rights Commission investigation to put pressure on Eastern Cape Education to devise a necessary plan.
