After 12 months of campaigning for school libraries Equal Education welcomes positive steps taken by Minister of Education Angie Motshekga, the Department of Basic Education (DBE), and certain provincial departments. These include:
- the gazetting of the National Policy on an Equitable Provision of an Enabling School Physical Teaching and Learning Environment (NPEP), on 11 June 2010;
- a detailed response from Minister Motshekga to Equal Education’s Memorandum, containing important admissions, and promises, about South Africa school library policy;
- unprecedented steps taken by the Gauteng and Western Cape MECs for Education, in regard to providing school libraries;
None of these steps alone are adequate to the provision of fully functioning libraries in every school, and none go far enough in terms of ensuring provision of all the requirements for a functioning library, including a trained librarian. Significant gaps in policy remain.
However, these steps represent progress, and constitute significant victory for a campaign that has been waged for 12 months, by thousands of learners, parents, teachers and community members across South Africa. With facts, argument, community education, leadership training and mass mobilization the working class youth leadership of Equal Education have proven that the South African education system can be transformed through the hard work of ordinary people.
For more detail read EE’s response to Minister Motshekga, sent 5 July 2010, and read further below. For interviews contact Yoliswa Dwane on 021 387 0022 or
dmitri@equaleducation.org.za
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.