Civil society cannot solve the country’s literacy crisis on its own, because the scale is too vast and the resources required too substantial

Since 2020, the Eastern Cape Department of Education has retained about R5 billion from the budgets of its poorest schools, ostensibly for “centralised procurement”. Some of that money could have funded proven teacher support, classroom libraries, and access to abundant free digital resources – multiple times over. Rod Amner and Laney van Wyk report

The board will now have to refund millions of rands it collected from residents of land under the trust’s control