Cape Town - Education officials are investigating allegations by pupils from a Khayelitsha school who claim they are being fined for a range of transgressions, including tardiness and misbehaving.
In a memorandum of grievances delivered to the Western Cape Education Department on Wednesday, Joe Slovo High pupils also claimed that pregnant pupils were fined R850, but the school’s principal, Majiet Parker, told the Cape Argus: “That is a lie.”
The school was in chaos on Monday after a group of “serial latecomers” allegedly started fires in rubbish bins and throwing stones at the school.
The school reported that these pupils arrived more than an hour and a half late for school.
They were reportedly asked to pay a fee for being late.
A classroom was set alight, windows were broken and several cars damaged.
On day pupils, joined by the leaders of the Congress of SA Students (Cosas) in the Western Cape, protested outside the offices of the Western Cape Education Department in the city centre where they handed over their memorandum to a senior official.
Cosas provincial chairman Michael Mayalo said the school was being run like a business.
Fines include R2 for arriving late and a R500 fine for misbehaving, for example, smoking and fighting.
“If you stay out of school for two days you pay a penalty of R500. They are learners who have paid that,” said Mayalo.
He said the pupils want to know what happened to the fine money.
The group started to march to Parliament but were stopped by police as they didn’t have the required permit. They then made their way to the Golden Acre Shopping Centre hoping to access Education MEC Debbie Schafer’s offices but again they were stopped.
Parker told the Cape Argus that the school charged pupils a fee of R2 if they were late and that this had been agreed upon by the school governing body, which includes parents and members of the Representative Council of Learners.
If students couldn’t pay, they would have to do tasks like cleaning the toilets or picking up litter.
He said tardiness had been a problem at the school and detention wasn’t working.
The money, he said, was given to the school’s financial officer, and was used to for repairs to the school, which had been repeatedly vandalised over the years.
Parker also indicated there was a fine for pupils who had repeatedly been caught smoking dagga but he said there were no other fines. “The instigators are the pupils who don’t want to be disciplined,” he said.
Schafer said pupils resorting to violence and destroying public property was unacceptable.
She said measures to curb tardiness varied from school to school. “While some measures such as detention work at some schools, at others it does not. Learners cannot, however, be charged a fine for being late.”
Cape Argus