Public-private partnership provides a life-line for young learners

In 2012 alone, the Department of Basic Education (DBE) distributed 54 million workbooks covering Literacy, Numeracy, Life Skills and First Additional Language to over 26 000 schools across South Africa.  This project is a private/public partnership involving DBE and a joint venture between Paarl Media, UTI and Lebone Litho, and has had a 98.4% success rate in terms of the delivery of these workbooks.

Since the workbook project was initiated in 2010 it has reached more than 1.8 million learners, and an. average increase of 30% has been recorded in Annual National Assessment (ANA) results across the various grades. .We believe this can be directly correlated to the delivery of the workbooks.

The director of business development at Paarl Media, Thobela Dikeni, said: “This success definitely marks a considerable milestone towards the goal of ensuring every learner has access to educational material on time - giving them the best chance to learn,”

The aim of the workbook project is to provide every learner with four books compiled of worksheets during each academic year– two for numeracy/mathematics and two for literacy/language in their mother tongue. These workbooks are key learning aids that guide learners and educators by unpacking subject matter through reading, writing and numeracy exercises. The content and design of the learning material is suitable for any learning environment and makes the job that much easier for learners and teachers in crowded classrooms.

Dikeni, said: “The key challenge faced has been maintaining the database of schools, particularly in rural areas where schools move around and are not fixed entities. The DBE has worked tirelessly to gather information to ensure the successful distribution of the workbooks so that no school is out of reach. Even schools in very remote areas are able to receive much-needed material and the data is constantly updated to make sure that it is current.” He said the delivery of the workbooks was a separate project to the delivery of textbooks.

“Data preparation for this project is done well in advance to ensure that each school gets the right combination of languages for each learner and the anticipated numbers of learners expected for the following year. Possible challenges in the data collection process include taking into account learner migration from rural to urban areas; movement across provinces as well as the merging or closure of schools,” said Dikeni.

“Through the efforts of the DBE, and their passionate commitment to this project, children that were previously out of reach are now receiving much needed educational collateral which helps towards the building of core skills at a vital juncture in the education process.

“My own children use these workbooks and I occasionally sit and work through the workbooks with them.  It gives me great pride to know that many other children across the country have access to the same quality learning material. Paarl Media is proud to be a part of the drive to improve literacy and numeracy levels in South Africa,” says Dikeni.

Dikeni said Paarl Media was also a very proud sponsor of the National Teaching Awards to be held next month. “We believe in our teachers, we believe that they hold the key to our country’s future as we trust them to educate our children. We want to show them that we are behind them. We are also delighted that the organisers have chosen to highlight the phenomenal success of this project as an example of what can be achieved.” Dikeni said President Jacob Zuma would be attending the event.  

Learners and teachers are not the only ones who have benefitted from this project, more than 5 600 people have been employed with a further 2 600 new jobs created during the duration of this project. This includes contract staff as well as small to medium enterprises that have supported the distribution process.

The workbook project started in 2010 with the aim of printing, binding and distributing the workbooks on behalf of the national Department of Basic Education. During the first year, 24 million workbooks for grades 1 to 6 learners were delivered.

Due to the success of this initial delivery, the tender was extended and the size of the project grew to 54 million workbooks.  The extension included adding workbooks for grades R and 7 – 12.

“While there are many challenges in the system, the success experienced in this project is encouraging and is what we need to build on for the future of our economy,” concludes Dikeni.

Note to editors:

• In addition to the workbooks, 3.2 million science and mathematics books were developed for Grade 10, 11 and 12. These were produced at a substantially reduced cost, as the DBE negotiated the writing of their content at no charge by volunteer academics, educators and industry professionals through Siyavula Publishing. This type of value-driven solution plays an important part in ensuring that learners have access to education material.