Schools’ SGBs under threat

Department seeks radical curbs on parents’ powers

THE Basic Education Department is set to squash the powers of the country’s school governing bodies if it can push through proposed amendments to the South African Schools Act.

The sought-after changes, which will impact on a school’s language policy, teacher appointments and pupil admissions, have put the department and school governing bodies on a collision course.

The public have until November 10 to comment on the Basic Education law’s Amendment Bill, which was published earlier this month.

The issues the bill raises are highly contentious and have seen the department and school governing bodies clash before in the Constitutional Court.

The Federation of Governing Bodies of South African Schools (Fedsas) has slammed the bill, which it believes is deliberately structured to diminish the powers of the school governing bodies in important decision-making at schools.

Fedsas warns that there will be unrest from communities if they are no longer able to have a say over teacher and school principal appointments.

The bill seeks to restrict who has the final say on the admission of pupils and that the department will be the body which determines a school’s language policy.

It all seeks to limit the powers of the governing bodies in regard to recommending candidates for appointment.

The bill also seeks to impose stricter penalties for parents who refuse to send their children to school and proposes that the current penalties of six months’ imprisonment be increased to six years.

According to the memorandum accompanying the bill, the department seeks to amend the current act so that provincial education department heads have the final say on the admission of pupils to public schools.

Currently, the act provides that a public school’s admission policy is determined by the school’s governing body.

The department, in the bill’s memorandum, says the amendments have become necessary because of confusion that arose as to where the authority lay in respect of public school admissions.

The proposed amendments around schools’ language policies seek to empower provincial education department heads to adopt more than one language of instruction.

This, according to the bill’s memorandum, is necessary in order to effectively use classroom space and resources.

When it comes to appointments, if the bill is successful in being passed, a school governing body would only be able to make recommendations to provincial education department heads about the appointment of potential teachers, and will have no say in the appointment of principals, their deputies or school department heads.

The department believes that the majority of schools do not have functional governing bodies or the people with the necessary skills to conduct interviews.

Jaco Deacon, deputy CEO of Fedsas, which represents 2 100 school governing bodies, said they were consulting over the proposed changes.

“Our biggest concern is that these amendments try to diminish the powers of the school governing bodies in decisionWe are moving away from public education to state education.”

On the proposed amendments as to who has the power to make appointments, Deacon warned of potential unrest in school communities if the department were able to do so without the say of communities.

He described the short-sighted.

Deacon said the department had a duty to train school governing bodies to be able to conduct interviews and recommend good candidates for appointments.

He said the challenge facing the department was to address the quality of education in all of South Africa’s 23 973 public schools.

“Every public school should be a good public school. The real issue is that we do not have good quality schools.” – DDC amendments as