AfriForum wants advice on judgment on school admissions

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Published May 21, 2016

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Pretoria – Civil rights group AfriForum will seek local and international advice on the Constitutional Court ruling regarding school admissions.

AfriForum has noted with concern the decision of the Constitutional Court on Friday in terms of which the Gauteng education department may now decide on school admissions, AfriForum deputy CEO Alana Bailey said on Saturday.

The organisation believed that if the department applied this ruling injudiciously it would result in gross violations of the rights of pupils, causing a further lowering of South African education standards and ultimately an exodus of the most promising staff and pupils from public schools.

The actions of the provincial and national education departments, and in particular Gauteng education MEC Panyaza Lesufi, in the recent past had done little to inspire confidence that the ruling would be applied in the best interest of pupils. Lesufi was “particularly notorious for controversial statements about alternative school management and racist generalisations against Afrikaans education”, she said.

“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-[tongue] 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.”

Bailey said AfriForum recognised 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 realised in the country, for example entails increasing the offer of mother-[tongue] 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 judgment 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 would also take up its implementation with international experts and institutions if basic rights such as the right to mother-tongue language education were to be violated.

“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-[tongue] language education we will have to undertake international actions where local remedies no longer provide relief.”

Bailey said private schools were a luxury that the majority of South Africans currently could not 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 would 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.

African News Agency

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