COSATU welcomes President Cyril Ramaphosa’s commitment to assent to the BELA Bill
12 September 2024
The Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) welcomes President Cyril Ramaphosa’s commitment to assent to the long debated Basic Education Laws Amendment (BELA) Bill. The BELA Bill contains many common sense and long-overdue progressive provisions that will help to protect the rights of learners to dignity and protection. It is a tragedy that in the course of the public debate some have chosen to deliberately distort some of its provisions and others have simply decided to fabricate things which are actually not in the Bill.
The BELA Bill contains several progressive and some long-overdue provisions, including:
Establishing Grade R as a required part of schooling for all learners. This will help lay a stronger foundation for learners entering Grade 1.
Strengthening provisions requiring learners to attend school and holding parents accountable for their children’s attendance.
Clear guidelines for school admission and diversity and inclusivity policies to prevent unfair discrimination and exclusion of learners.
Clear guidelines as well checks and balances for school language of instruction policies to ensure that learners’ needs, diversity and all South Africans’ linguistic rights are accommodated.
Recognition of South African Sign Language as a language of instruction and learning.
Strengthening rules prohibiting drugs, alcohol and weapons from schools and empowering schools to search for and confiscate such items as needed.
Banning corporal punishment and initiation practices from schools.
Centralised procurement of key materials, e.g. textbooks, which can help save costs and reduce corruption.
Making it easier for single parents to register their children at school when their ex-partners are absent.
Measures to ensure financial accountability and prohibit officials from doing business with schools.
Whilst welcoming these progressive provisions, COSATU believes several provisions in the Bill that need to be reviewed by the 7th Parliament. The Federation remains concerned about the Department of Basic Education’s over reliance on learner numbers as the criteria for closing or merging schools. This places learners in farming and remote rural areas who live far from schools at a serious disadvantage. Additional criteria need to be included, in particular the distance learners must travel to school and the availability of learner transport.
COSATU urges the 7th Parliament to be bold and extend the compulsory school years from Grade 9 to 12. An unaffordably high number of learners exit schools at age 15 or Grade 9 as currently allowed. This is sending an army of youth into the economy without the necessary education, skills and qualifications needed to find work and to take care of the families. Learners should be required to remain in school until completing Grade 12 or in a TVET or vocational college. If we are to ensure young people can find work, grow the economy and create jobs, then we need to increase, not decrease the number of learners in schools and colleges.
Issued by Matthew Parks, Parliamentary Coordinator, COSATU, 12 September 2024
