Collaboration and donor-funded schools take away control from parents
COULD it be that Equal Education, Equal Education Law Centre and the SA Democratic Teachers Union (Sadtu) were all fast asleep in 2018 when former MEC for education Debbie Schäfer introduced the Basic Education Laws Amendment Bill?
Collaboration and donor-funded schools were introduced in this bill. The bill has since become the Western Cape Provincial School Education Amendment Act of 2018.
The South African Schools Act of 1996 (Sasa) clearly stipulates that the number of parent members of a governing body at a public school must be one more than the combined total of all other members with voting rights.
This is to ensure that parent members play a significant part in the decisions that will ultimately affect their children as learners at the school.
According to the Sasa, this is nonnegotiable. If the collaboration and donor-funded schools are classified as public schools, then they should comply with this requirement. If not, then they are clearly violating the Schools Act.
As indicated in my letter “Education amendment bill contravenes Schools Act” in October 2018, then MEC Debbie Schäfer and her legal team felt it fit to propose an education bill that contravenes this requirement of the Schools Act.
Yet, the proposed bill, now an act, stipulated that collaboration and donor-funders comprise 50% of the voting members of a school governing body. This, I pointed out contravenes clause 23(9) of the Sasa.
With the stroke of a pen, the former MEC single-handedly removed the voting power of parents with her introduction of collaboration and donor-funded schools.
In a subsequent letter in 2018, “Education MEC is to be blamed for lack of transformation at schools like RGJS”, I also pointed out the lack of transformation at most former Model C schools, and in particular as exposed in the media by educationist, Prof Nuraan Davids at Rustenburg Girls’ Junior School (RGJS).
Would it not be much more difficult to transform collaboration and donor-funded schools where parents have a minority representation on the governing body?
You be the judge.
ADIEL ISMAIL | Mountview