The education department says it will publish the policy document on Religion in Education on Friday for a month-long process of public comment. Briefing the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Education earlier today, the department’s director-general Thami Mseleku said the policy document suggested that religious practice should reflect the multi-religious nature of society. “Now there is no prescription of course in the document as the details will show, about how that multi-religious character should be shown, all it is saying is it should actually reflect the multi-religious character of our society,” Mseleku told the committee.

The DG said every activity of any school in the Schools Act, should ensure that all learners participated. He said the department expected schools to find various ways of expressing this multi-religious character.

“None of which of course should exclude any group of learners from that kind of situation as such unless of course it’s actually from the point of view of those learners themselves exercising their right which of course may also have to be catered for,” he said. Mseleku said the policy provided for a framework, which stated that people had the right to religious observance, provided they ensured it did not infringe on the rights of others. He said the department had in the past been called upon to intervene in cases where learners were excluded because their religious beliefs didn’t fit in with the beliefs of the school.

The department’s deputy director-general Duncan Hindle told the portfolio committee that the Council of Education Ministers (CEM) had approved the policy document last Monday for publication and public comment.

He said the main aim of the policy document was to reinforce the constitutional provisions around religion and education, and to provide legal clarity following from the South African Schools Act, which accords schools the right to hold religious observances. “If we did not respond to these concerns, these practices that we are aware of I would believe that the State would certainly be open to a challenge that it is not protecting the rights of its citizens in the way that the constitution and the legislation had intended,” said Hindle. – BuaNews.