IASL 2003 Conference Logo

The 2003 IASL Conference

Durban, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, 7-11 July 2001

SPEECH BY
Mosibudi Mangena
Deputy Minister of Education South Africa

at the Opening Ceremony of the 32nd IASL Conference

BuaNews (Pretoria)
July 7, 2003
Posted to the web July 7, 2003

Nombini Matomela
Pretoria

Deputy Minister of Education Mosibudi Mangena says his department is currently working on a Policy Framework for school libraries in the country.

Deputy minister Mangena was speaking at the official opening of the 32nd International Association of School Librarianship Conference at Durban's International Convention Centre today.

'This draft document locates itself within the context of socio-political and educational transformation that is driven by the new legislative framework and the educational paradigm shift to outcomes-based education,' said the deputy minister.

Mr Mangena said the draft policy argued that teachers and learners would only be able to access an outcomes-based curriculum if they had access to learning resources.

He said this had implications for the way school libraries conceptualised, managed and provided resources.

The deputy minister said the draft policy document recommended different models of school libraries to provide access to resources for learners and drew attention to the relationship between the school library, the curriculum and learning resources.

It also supported the view that the school library was a facility suitable to provide learners with a wide range of curriculum-oriented resources in diverse media forms, as required by an outcomes-based education system, said the deputy minister.

'The majority of our public schools have no functional school libraries. School libraries are generally found in the schools that were formally meant for White, Coloureds and Indians,' said the deputy minister.

He said, as a result, 'this has created great disparities in teaching and learning conditions.'

To diminish the backlogs, the draft policy document recommended that provincial departments follow either a transitional or phased in approach or an incremental approach of slowly increasing the number of schools with centralised traditional libraries.

Last Updated 8 July 2003 (LAC)