Leave our homeschool kids alone, say parents
Fury as education bill proposes crackdown on curriculums and teaching methods
While pupils in mainstream schools spend their days in a classroom, children at Riverstone Village are free to play “all day, every day”.
They can play fantasy and fitness games or Monopoly, or listen to music in a huge cottage on a 2ha plot in North Riding, Johannesburg, where self-directed education takes place.
Unlike the more than 12-million pupils attending public schools who follow the Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statements (Caps) curriculum, the 24 “members” at Riverstone, whose ages range from five to 20, don’t follow a set curriculum.
While the facility is a full-time educational alternative and not a homeschooling centre, thousands of “micro” centres have sprung up across the country offering tuition to traditional homeschoolers.
There are an estimated 35,000-50,000 pupils in the compulsory schooling age of seven to 15 who are being homeschooled, according to an organisation known as LearnFree.
The proliferation of small “schools” catering for the home education sector as well as the huge shift towards online schooling comes amid growing opposition to several contentious clauses in the Basic Education Laws Amendment Bill.
According to a draft report on the bill that was tabled at a meeting of the portfolio committee on basic education this week, one of the most controversial clauses is that governing bodies must submit the school’s admission policy for approval to the head of the department for education in a province.
A clause stipulating that pupils may be educated at home only if they are registered for such education has infuriated homeschooling parents.
“Most of the submissions were around the rights of parents to determine where and how they should educate their children,” the report stated.
It said lengthy submissions indicated that the Children’ sAct “already sufficiently regulates home education and no additional regulation is needed in the Sasa [South African Schools Act]”.
The bill proposes to amend the South African Schools Act and the Employment of Educators Act “to align them with developments in the education landscape”.
The report states that most of the writers of the submissions indicated they would not like homeschoolers to follow Caps or be assessed against it “as they are not convinced Caps delivers the requirements their children need”.
Portia Mbude-Mutshekwane, content adviser to the portfolio committee on basic education, told parliament that some parents preferred their children to have access to online lessons because “the current public school curriculum does not offer the flexibility that their children want”.
The submissions indicated that because of substantial changes during the pandemic, alternative forms of education have emerged that are not articulated in the bill.
“These include online/virtual schooling, cottage schools, education centres as well as co-operative homeschooling.”
She said submissions indicated that there should be exemptions from compulsory school attendance for children whose parents have notified the head of department of their intention to “home-educate”.
The bill also proposes an increase in jail time from six to 12 months for parents who prevent their children from attending school without good reason.
A total of 18,000 written submissions had been made by members of the public when the deadline expired on August 15.
From the total of 3,504 processed written submissions, 3,138 opposed the bill.
The Pestalozzi Trust, a civil rights organisation for home educators, said in its submission that “the substantive and procedural flaws in the [bill] are of such a nature that if parliament were to approve the bill as it currently stands, its promulgation may be deemed unconstitutional”.
“The Sasa is inappropriate to regulate home education and the department of basic education is not in possession of the requisite research.”
The Pestalozzi Trust is among a host of organisations that will participate in oral public hearings on the bill in parliament that will be held on November 8, 15 and 22.
Meanwhile, Sipho Mpisane, deputy principal of the University of Cape Town’s online high school, said they received more than 4,800 applications for enrolment next year.
“We will now be offering the Cambridge International curriculum.
“This shows how the traditional homeschooling sector is diversifying and becoming a viable alternative for conventional brick-and-mortar schools.”
Louise Schoonwinkel, MD of Optimi Home, whose brand Impaq provides learning materials to homeschoolers, said their numbers grew from 19,000 in 2019 to 32,000 this year.
Juan Visser, regional director for SubSaharan Africa for Cambridge International, estimated that 3,500 private candidates in South Africa were taking the Cambridge exams this year.
Je’anna Clements, a staff member at Riverstone Village, said their students were not placed into different grades and “every child will be following their own interests, whatever that might be”.
“Occasionally they ask for classes but they learn mostly in far more efficient ways through their own research, exploration and education by conversation.”
Siraj Ghoor, founder of Open Minds Campus in Midrand, who has a pupil enrolment of 24, said they taught pupils to set their own goals and prepare for exams.
His school also does not have grades. Instead, pupils are divided into three phases, namely ages 8-11, 12-14 and 15 upwards.
“We focus primarily on English and a second language and science and maths. Our pupils follow the Cambridge curriculum.”