Durban - The mother of a Grade 8 Ballito schoolboy who was expelled after testing positive for dagga, has launched an urgent high court application challenging the school’s authority to randomly test pupils using shop-bought urine sampling kits.
But while the mother – who works in the legal profession – insists the school’s conduct was “unconstitutional and unlawful” and that her son must be reinstated, the school says its zero-tolerance drug policy is crucial because the upmarket suburb is the “crucible for drug taking and dealing on the North Coast”.
“We go to great lengths to ensure the school remains drug-free and anti-drug. It is as important to us as education,” Ashton College head Petrus Erasmus said in his affidavit which came before Judge Gregory Kruger on Tuesday.
“The learners are all aware that he was expelled and why he was expelled. If he were permitted to return, it would make a mockery of that,” he said.
The 15-year-old pupil enrolled at the private school at the beginning of this year.
According to his mother, the day before the drug test he had been off school “with a fever” and had been prescribed medication by a doctor.
In her affidavit, she complained that Erasmus did not ask her permission to perform the test and did not inform her son of the consequences of it.
Erasmus was also not properly trained to do the test and had “used some kind of polystyrene cup” to collect the urine.
“It was a serious violation of my son’s right to privacy and human dignity and a transgression of his rights as a child. There is no mention in the code of conduct about the school’s entitlement to perform urine tests.”
She also accused a local doctor – who did a later test – of disclosing the outcome of this to the school “in contravention of doctor/patient confidentiality”.
Her son was suspended from school in early September, and a subsequent disciplinary hearing, she said, was “a sham” because he was not allowed to give evidence or call witnesses, there was no direct evidence, and the sample process was flawed. She said his expulsion would probably mean “the loss of the entire academic year” because it was too late to enrol elsewhere.
Erasmus, in opposing the application, said random drug testing and dog searches were done at the school “in terms of the code of conduct”.
“We are not victimising the pupil. We wanted to co-operate with him and his family, but we were met with obstruction and aggression.”
He said the test was conducted after the pupil was pointed out as having been selling “green stuff in plastic bags” at a local market at the weekend.
The school used sealed test kits bought from a pharmaceutical company, and the test result showed the presence of heroin/morphine and dagga.
“He showed no surprise at the result. He said he used Stilpain and claimed his brother smoked a lot of dagga and he had probably inhaled it,” he said.
Erasmus denied that the doctor had ever given the school the later results, saying the mother would only disclose that he had tested positive for a “drug from a green plant”. But the pupil had volunteered to a teacher, in front of others, that the doctor had said “the weed result is 100%, but the heroin was the cough mixture”.
“We are sensitive about the fact that the end of the year is approaching. Although he was the only pupil in his grade to fail the third term, we have offered him a home schooling programme and he will be entitled to sit the exams, in isolation, at the end of the year,” Erasmus said.
The matter has been set down for argument later this month.
* Comments have been closed to protect the identity of the minor mentioned in the article.
The Mercury