Submission to Portfolio Committee on Basic Education – Comments on How to Improve Basic Education - Civil Society

‘The pass rate at my school last year was very low. One of the causes was that we have no library.’, argues Mnoneleli Ngubo (21), Grade 12 EE Youth Group Leadership Committee Deputy Chairperson.

Executive Summary

Equal Education (EE) is a movement of learners, parents, teachers and community members working for quality and equality in South African education, through research, analysis and activism. Our head office is in Khayelitsha, Western Cape. Since being founded in 2008, Equal Education has led initiatives aimed at the development of learning facilities; improved practice, content and access to teaching; the building of commitment and passion among teachers and learners; and improving the overall efficacy of South Africa’s education system, among other things. Our focus and attention is directed by the interests of our members, drawn largely from the working-class and poor. Some of our successful campaigns have resulted in the upgrade of school facilities, centred around the repair of 500 broken windows in a Khayelitsha school, and reducing the proportion of learners coming late in school across Cape Town.

In 2009, EE began the Campaign for School Libraries. This campaign, the slogan of which is “1 School, 1 Library, 1 Librarian,” seeks to address the gross shortage of libraries in our public schools. The campaign speaks directly to the need for broad infrastructural improvement in public schools. The most recent government statistics reveal that there are still many schools in South Africa that are without, or have extremely poor, basic infrastructure.

This paper deals with the broad basic infrastructural needs and backlogs faced by many South African schools, which include the supply of water; sanitation; electricity; libraries; laboratories and computer centres. There still exists major inequality in access to basic resources in our schools. This is reflected in the disparate results between poor and privileged schools, with the latter performing better across the board. Based on sound research that demonstrates the positive link between improved access to resources and infrastructure and improved outcomes it is argued that the Department of Basic Education must adopt a national legal and policy framework against which the development of school infrastructure must be assessed. This must be addressed systematically through an equitable policy, in order for the backlogs to be adequately and efficiently dealt with, in view of the current inequalities.

After dealing with the need to address problems in school infrastructure generally, particular focus is given to the lack of school libraries. The schools attended by the majority of Equal Education’s learner membership face a broad range of infrastructural problems, however it was particularly the issue of libraries which our members raised and committed themselves to addressing through the Campaign for School Libraries. The demands set by the EE Campaign for School Libraries are directly in line with the outcomes of local and international research, which demonstrates a clear link between the provision of school libraries and improved learner performance. EE has conducted a study producing a costing estimate for the provision of functional libraries in all South African public schools. The findings of this study will also be dealt with in brief below, however the full research document is annexed hereto.