A while ago I posted the details of Edulis the Education Library and Information Service of the Western Cape Education Department. Among other things they recommend books to be part of the school libraries in the Western Cape. I also mentioned that both The Magic that’s Ours
and The Power that’s Ours 
was put onto their list of recommendation. Recently I read an article in a major newspaper about the state, if any, of the libraries in schools throughout the Western Cape, and it doesn’t look good.
Through my talks at schools I’ve come to meet many librarians, most of who are extremely passionate about what they do. They love everything about books and try and promote literacy in any way possible.They are the one’s that young learners turn to when they want to learn about books. But since the new curriculum was introduced the position of a librarian is now seen as a “specialist “post and more often then not there is no funding for librarian positions- so they just fell by the wayside. No librarians= no passionate people to promote literacy.
Without libraries and librarians how can we expect our youth – many from disadvantaged communities, with no access to books, to develop as per the global benchmarks?. Not surprising that we have one of the lowest levels of literacy in the world with only 48.6% of the Grade 6’s from the province meeting the literary requirements set out for their grade last year.
Only 58. 2% of schools in the Western Cape have stocked libraries
27% of schools have space for a library but no books
47% have no libraries at all.
(I know the maths doesn’t add up- but these are the figures directly from the article. One wonders about the numeracy levels:))
Alarmingly, only 8% of the 24 000 schools nationally have stocked libraries.
Next time around it’s back to my Corporate sponsorship deal which relates directly to this post.