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The Director-General in the Department of Basic Education, Bobby Soobrayan, has proudly proclaimed that the Portfolio Committee gave his Department the “thumbs up” and “fully accepted” its planned steps to ensure that learners affected by the Limpopo textbook crisis are receiving adequate support. This is patently false.

As I said in Committee yesterday, the DA has a number of concerns, which include:

• The department’s failure to deliver textbooks in indigenous languages to Limpopo schools;
• the lack of timelines to implement key reforms;
• the fact that interventions in certain grades will only be implemented after the completion of the Annual National Assessments – which will only take place at the end of September; and
• the absence of assurances that structured extra classes will be provided to support learners affected by the crisis.

We have yet to see a level of detail in the proposed catch-up plan that really goes beyond what the Department of Education should in actual fact have been doing as a matter of course. We are therefore not convinced that the current catch-up plan satisfies the requirements set out in the court order granted to Section 27.

The Department should not be so quick to pat itself on the back and bask in the praise of ANC Members of Parliament. We will continue to monitor the Limpopo education crisis closely and are hoping to see more detailed feedback from Mr Soobrayan and his colleagues when they appear before the committee again.