Thank you, Madam Speaker, and thank you to the hon Van den Heever for the question. The reply is as follows. As hon members would be aware, there were different levels of disruption in education during the public-sector strike. The provincial education departments have thus developed plans that respond to their specific needs.
In some provinces we lost up to three weeks of teaching, while in others we lost no more than a day or two. Teaching time was not disrupted at all in one or two of the provinces and in others we had mid-year tests, which were the only form of learning disruption, as well as mid-year examinations. So we've had to develop plans that respond to this range of challenges. The plans that we have developed have been more successful in some provinces than in others. The majority of provinces are implementing the additional teaching programmes. In some we still have a difference of opinion as to levels of stipend to be paid for additional teaching, but I'm hopeful that this will be resolved.
Our part at the national level has been the provision and large-scale distribution of learning materials. Colleagues should be aware that, when we developed the intervention, we had no knowledge as to how long the strike would last and therefore had developed quite a detailed set of self- directed learning materials for young people across all grades in the system.
During the past two months we have used radio adverts; we continue to do so. We are continuing to distribute the self-directed learning material via newspapers and are providing lessons on the SABC learning channel. These have contributed to our overall strategy. Community radio stations are also assisting in this area.
We intend to have distributed 93,8 million copies of the learning materials by the end of October 2007. We have also purchased workbooks to assist learners in the higher grades at secondary school with revision in English and mathematics. We are using 89 distribution points throughout the country, and from those points books and material are delivered to schools.