Speech by Minister Donald Grant

I am delighted to be here today in celebration of International School Library Month.

The number one priority of Western Cape Education Department (WCED) is to improve the literacy and numeracy skills of all our learners. Literacy performance in the Western Cape has improved steadily over the years, thanks to special interventions, but the results are still not good enough.

Therefore I am very excited to be a part of this celebration today which promotes reading amongst our learners and encourages our schools to promote best practice in their libraries so that they remain functional resource centres for our youth.

We are also here today to announce the winners of our school library competition, which includes various categories such as “Best librarian”, “Best library” and “Best progress”.

I would like to congratulate all the winners and finalists in this competition. You and your schools are positively contributing to the improvement of our learner’s ability to read and write and develop their skills through the use your resource centres.

I would also like to thank the booksellers and publishers present who have generously donated prizes for our winners.

Many thanks also to our Edulis team for organizing this competition. It is a fantastic opportunity to promote best practice in our school libraries, as well as promote our passion for creating text-rich environments in our schools.

In the past 3 years the Western Cape has spent R120 million in establishing school libraries in our poorest schools. This has seen, amongst other things, 325 000 books being provided to schools.

This year, a further R42 million has been invested to assist over 650 schools across the Western Cape, including the distribution of over 400 000 books. This project is expected to be completed by the 15th of December 2010.

While we are excited about these developments, it must be remembered that school libraries form part of a broader project by the WCED in ensuring that our schools are text-rich.

Therefore, we are putting as many resources as possible into creating text-rich schools. We have for example, spent an additional R101 million on providing texts to our schools. This is over and above the usual norms and standards allocation that all schools receive. This money is largely spent in particular on the critical foundation phase, or grades 1-3.

We have also embarked on a very ambitious R1.9 billion school construction programme. The 25 new schools that will be built in the next three years will include provision for resource centres.

We have also ensured, through a top-up programme, that a further 15 000 textbooks were provided to our Grade 12 learners.

These initiatives are unique to the Western Cape and demonstrate how serious our commitment is to creating text-rich schools.

Therefore, as we rightly celebrate the contribution of libraries in our schools, I would like to appeal to everyone involved to continue with your efforts, making our school libraries examples of best practice to schools throughout South Africa.

Thank you.

For enquiries, contact Bronagh Casey:  072 724 1422 or brcasey@pgwc.gov.za.

Visit our website: http://wced.wcape.gov.za