Durban - Education officials who misinterpret the law and act on “imagined powers” have seen the government frequently and unnecessarily dragged to court, according to new research which documents education litigation since 1994.
In the research, various education and legal role-players also express “extreme concern” over the tendency of education officials to ignore court orders.
The researchers, from the University of Pretoria, probed the opinions and experiences of what they called “high-profile” and “influential” role-players in education - some of whom were personally involved in litigation.
The unnamed research participants included the senior management of education departments, those from parent and teacher organisations, academics, judicial officers and activists.
Educationists that The Mercury spoke to agreed with many of the assertions made in the research, which was published in the South African Journal Of Education, and authored by Professor Johan Beckmann and Justus Prinsloo.
The research participants argued that nearly all legal disputes in the past two decades seemed to have been between provincial education departments and school governing bodies or teachers.
While school governing bodies have been on the receiving end of the courts’ censure for instances of discrimination, the overriding concern expressed in the research was directed at the conduct of education officials.
Participants argued that ignorance of the law often led to disputes.
“The education officials make decisions too fast and do not seek enough legal advice, nor give proper consideration to such advice,” one participant said.
Many disputes would not reach the courts if officials were equipped with better conflict resolution skills and were not loath to engage in conflict resolution activities.
Basil Manuel, president of the National Professional Teachers’ Organisation of SA, agreed that there were many instances of officials who interpreted the law poorly and were given poor legal advice.
Manuel called the government’s reliance on litigation a “misuse of power” and said the number of cases it lost was “scary”.
He said the issue of “imagined power” applied to district managers in particular. However, school governing bodies were not blameless and there were instances of some using their authority to discriminate against certain groups of children, Manuel added.
Tim Gordon, chief executive of an association called the Governing Body Foundation, said that “egos” were often the reason why disputes were not resolved before the courts were approached.
While many education officials did not seem to understand that public schools were a partnership between the government and parents, some school governing bodies behaved as if they were running independent schools, Gordon said.
He said there was an increasing shift away from the power struggles between school governing bodies and education officials toward human rights cases, with civil society organisations as the litigants.
The Basic Education Department referred requests for comment to the Justice Department, which said it would only be able to respond on Monday.
Recent litigation involving the KZN Education Department:
* In 2013 independent schools in KwaZulu-Natal won a Constitutional Court battle to compel the provincial education department to pay millions of rands in subsidies outstanding since 2009, forcing it to honour the financial commitment it had made to schools, despite budget cuts.
* Last year the governing body of Westville Senior Primary School took the KwaZulu-Natal Education Department to court over its exclusion of five candidates for the job of principal for ‘trifling reasons’.
While the department had been expected to oppose the application, it later back-tracked and the Durban High Court granted an order setting aside its decision.
* Also last year, the head of the KZN Education Department, Nkosinathi Sishi, was very nearly jailed for contempt of court for not signing a document relating to a dispute with a private higher education institution.
The Mercury