Provinces get go-ahead to use controversial textbook catalogue - TimesLIVE

Provincial education departments have been given the green light to order textbooks from the controversy-dogged foundation phase catalogue, after it was approved by the Council of Education Ministers (CEM) last week.

The catalogue updates the list of approved books for grades 1 to 3, and is an important part of the basic education department’s efforts to improve the literacy and numeracy skills of young learners, which lag their international peers.

The catalogue, which was last updated 15 years ago, came under intense scrutiny after it emerged in April that a new publishing company with no prior experience had won a large share of the titles.

The CEM, which is chaired by basic education minister Siviwe Gwarube and includes education MECs, provincial education department heads and senior officials, endorsed the new catalogue on Friday.

“They found no fraud, no favouritism and therefore no basis to cancel,” it said in a statement.

The new catalogue offered updated, curriculum-aligned materials with stronger resources for early grade reading, it said. It includes 40 readers per class, and a core reader per learner, while reducing the number of listed titles from eight to three to enable more focused teacher development and support. The catalogue also makes provision for newer subjects such as coding and robotics.

The new catalogue was expected to save the government R3bn, as it would cost R1.6bn to implement, compared to R4.6bn for the old catalogue, the department said on Monday. Co-ordinated procurement would reduce costs as it would enable publishers to print larger volumes of books at the same time, thus achieving economies of scale, it said.