Lavender Hill Library Launch

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*Lavender Hill Secondary School gets a library after decades of struggle*

*Archbishop Thabo Makgoba and Vice Chancellor Brian O’Connell to speak*

*Equal Education Campaign for School Libraries continues*

 

Equal Education (EE), with Principal Mr Faseeg Manie, invite you to the opening of a new school library at Lavender Hill Senior Secondary School in Retreat, Cape Town. The ceremony will be held at the school at 14:15 on Wednesday 14 July 2010. See below for directions.

 

Key speakers will be Archbishop Thabo Makgoba, head of the Anglican Church of Southern Africa, and Prof Brian O'Connell, Vice Chancellor of the University of the Western Cape. Representatives of the Western Cape Education Department will also be present.

 

An update will also be given on the year-long Campaign for School Libraries that Equal Education has conducted. Certain key breakthroughs and difficulties will be explained.

 

Only 8% of the public schools in South Africa have functional school libraries. Major studies, conducted both locally and abroad, have shown that the provision of functional school libraries can improve average learner outcomes by between 10 and 25%.

 

Since its founding in 2008, EE has been striving for quality and equality in the South African education system. Since early 2009, the organization’s staff and members – primarily made up of learners, teachers and parents – have been involved in a national ‘Campaign for School Libraries’ under the slogan: ‘1 School, 1 Library, 1 Librarian’.

 

On 1 March of this year, EE officially opened a new department at 20 Roeland Street, Cape Town: The Bookery – Home of the Equal Education Book Drive. The Bookery is a depot where books suitable for either primary or secondary school learners can be donated; books that are up-to-date and in good condition. In partnership with government and each recipient school, all of these donations are sorted, covered, labeled and catalogued using the latest computer software.

 

Each library established by The Bookery contains a minimum of three books per learner per school, and caters for the needs and interests of its readership through a comprehensive selection of fiction, non-fiction and reference works. To ensure sustainability, each school has an existing library space and a member of staff committed to fulfilling the role of a librarian.

 

With 1100 learners, Lavender Hill Senior Secondary will be receiving over 3300 books, which include a variety of the latest Oxford Dictionaries for South African languages; the memoirs and biographies of icons ranging from Nelson Mandela to Anne Frank; a selection of new encyclopedic works on science, evolution, sport and history; and more than 1500 novels enjoyed by high school learners the world over.