Pretoria - The court case brought against the Department of Education by Hoërskool OverVaal has been postponed.
The school brought urgent application to the north Gauteng High Court in Pretoria to bar the Department from forcing the school to take in an additional 55 learners.
According to Judge Bill Prinsloo the school brought the application on December 20, which afforded the Department the opportunity to respond by January 4.
Prinsloo said despite a communication gap which resulted in the department only receiving communication nine days later, they managed to respond using the online system on January 2.
Advocate Albert Lamey, representing the school located in Vereeniging requested the matter be stood down for one day to allow for all representatives and Prinsloo to consider the contents of the lengthy submissions made by the school.
Advocate Kumbira Toma, departmental representative requested four days, however Prinsloo insisted that the matter needed to be resolved as speedily as possible.
Parents who filled in the courtroom in 2D to hear the proceedings said for years their children had to travel past the school to other schools located over 15km away.
Departmental spokesperson, Steve Mabona, said the postponement was fair as a late affidavit had been filed by the school from other schools.
Mabona said however what was happening was quite sad that schools would resort to taking the department to court when the department had proof that they had space.
He said: “We want access to education for all. We offered to give them an educator, learner material and as such we don’t understand the resistance to accommodate other learners. All we asked for was dual-medium.”
The matter was postponed to Thursday.