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The Democratic Alliance (DA) is pleased to note that discrimination against deaf learners through the ANC government's refusal to develop sign language as a school subject may be a thing of the past.

Last year the DA supported a legal bid by Kyle Springate, a deaf matric pupil at Westville Boys High, to compel the Department of Education (DoE) to declare sign language an official school subject. While the department eventually agreed to endorse sign language as a matric subject for him - after he took it to court - he still had to take it to court on its refusal to allow sign language to be used as a matric subject generally.

However, last month Minister of Basic Education Angie Motshekga called for nominations of suitable people to serve on a reference group that would look at how sign language could be added to the school curriculum. The closing date for the receipt of applications was reached this week.

The DA believes that the DoE's continuing refusal to recognise sign language as an examinable subject up until now is grossly unfair to the over one million hearing impaired and deaf South Africans. Deaf learners must be provided with as many tools and opportunities as possible to help them to obtain the same level of education that non-hearing-impaired learners receive. Recognising sign language as a school subject is crucial to this.

The government still has a long way to go, however. The DA now urges Motshekga to:

Reveal who will be involved in the reference group and what their experiences and qualifications are;
Outline what the reference group needs to achieve its goals; and
Reveal what the reference group's targets are and what deadlines they have

The DA will be posing parliamentary questions to monitor the progress made by the working group.