AfriForum to obtain local and international advice re Constitutional Court judgment on school admissions
21 May 2016
AfriForum has noted the decision of the Constitutional Court yesterday in terms of which the Gauteng Department of Education may now decide on school admissions with concern. The organisation is of the opinion that if the department were to apply this ruling injudiciously, it will result in gross violations of the rights of learners, causing a further lowering of South African education standards and ultimately to an exodus of the most promising staff and learners from public schools.
According to Alana Bailey, Deputy CEO of AfriForum, the actions of the provincial and national education departments, and in particular of the MEC of Education in Gauteng, Mr Panyaza Lesufi, in the recent past has done little to inspire confidence that the ruling will be applied in the best interest of learners. Lesufi is particularly notorious for controversial statements about alternative school management and racist generalizations against Afrikaans education.
“AfriForum will study the judgment in depth to ascertain what its exact implications are and how it will affect issues such as school placement in other provinces, the offering of mother-language instruction, the determination of class sizes and the refusal of learners with a criminal record. All of these aspects have a direct impact on the delivery of quality education,” she said.
Bailey emphasized that AfriForum recognizes the right of every child to have access to quality education. “No child’s rights can however be advanced by denying others of their rights. The way to ensure that educational rights are realized in the country, for example entails increasing the offer of mother-language education, restoring dysfunctional schools and building more schools to meet an increasing demand. However, the department is failing in all of these respects and AfriForum fears in the light of the court judgement that its quick fix would be simply to place more children in functional schools.”
In addition to advice on the scope and implications of the ruling, AfriForum will also take up its implementation with international experts and institutions, if basic rights such as the right to mother-language education were to be violated by it. “AfriForum has for a long time been in contact with international language and educational rights institutions. If the consequences of the judgment indeed undermines access to mother-language education, we will have to undertake international actions where local remedies no longer provide relief.”
Bailey mentioned that private schools are a luxury that the majority of South Africans currently cannot afford. However, if in the long run, such schools were to become the only option for quality education without ideological interference, options to offer private tuition of the highest quality more affordably will have to be investigated.
“The future of the South African youth simply is too important to entrust it to education authorities that even struggle with basic issues such as textbook delivery, assessment tests, violence in schools and the sale of teaching posts,” Bailey said.
Statement issued by Alana Bailey, Deputy CEO, AfriForum, 21 May 2016
