Supply chain management challenges faced by public schools: an Umzinyathi district, KwaZulu-Natal case study.
Abstract
The South African Schools Act No. 84 of 1996 states that all learners should be
provided with a high quality of education and in so doing to lay a strong foundation
for the development of learners’ talents and capabilities. The act provides a clear
framework so that everyone can understand the South African education system.
However, the education system faces many challenges, particularly with regard to
public schools. For example, there is a shortage of textbooks within the public
schools, so that a considerable number of learners must share textbooks, which
negatively impacts their learning. Against this background, the aim of the study was
to identify the supply chain management challenges faced by public schools in the
Umzinyathi district and to explore how these challenges could be managed and
addressed.
The study is descriptive and exploratory, and a qualitative approach was used. Data
was collected through semi-structured interviews with 20 stakeholders in the DoE.
The stakeholders were selected by means of a non-probability sampling method. The
collected data was analysed using thematic analysis.
The findings revealed that the main supply chain challenges centred around three
themes, namely, procurement challenges, service delivery or logistics challenges, and
demand challenges. These challenges negatively impact on learners’ education. The
study recommends that the public schools should be directly involved in the
procurement processes to avoid any delays, shortages and over pricing, amongst other
challenges. Furthermore, communication around supply chain challenges faced by
public schools between DoE and school principals needs to be improved.
The contribution of this study is twofold. Firstly, it adds to the existing body of
literature by identifying the challenges experienced in the country’s public education
and, secondly, the findings and recommendations could be useful in order to address
the supply chain challenges faced by public school for stakeholders in the South
African public education sector.