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ActionSA has submitted its objections to the Basic Education Laws Amendment (BELA) Bill before Parliaments Select Committee on Education, Technology, Sports, Arts, and Culture as we believe it is a flawed legislative attempt to camouflage the structural deficiencies of South Africa’s education system resulting from decades of systemic mismanagement.

Our presentation follows our picket outside Parliament in January 2024, where ActionSA made our submissions on the Basic Education Laws Amendment (BELA) Bill and highlighted what our alternatives are to ensure quality education in South Africa.

ActionSA was founded with quality education as founding value, which is precisely why we have taken up the fight against the BELA Bill which we believe fundamentally fails to address the existing challenges in our education system. 

Instead, the Bill will only serve to compound the challenges by introducing a series of proposals that lack coherence and fail to align with the actual needs and realities of our education landscape. We have highlighted that the BELA Bill will not make the necessary inroads to improve the dysfunction within our education system, which has left nearly 80% of all schools characterised as dysfunctional.

ActionSA contends that the BELA Bill is a power grab by the Department of Basic Education Minister masked as a legitimate legislative effort; the consequence of which will dramatically limit the role of parents, and particularly School Governing Bodies (SGB) in our education system. 

We are particularly concerned with respect to proposed amendments that will have an adverse impact on language policies, specifically the attempt to empower the Minister to set a school’s language policy regardless of what a School Governing Body (SGB) decides. This concern is further heightened by the potential limitations it poses on parents' ability to decide whether to home-school their children.

We have submitted that home-schooling offers a conducive learning environment to many learners and therefore, we believe that must be recognised. We also submitted the need for the retention of control by School Governing Bodies (SGBs) to decide the language policy of their respective schools.

ActionSA also opposes the blanket lifting of the ban on the sale of alcohol at schools proposed in the BELA Bill. No alcohol should ever be sold on school premises when children under 18 are present or may reasonably be expected to be present. 

ActionSA reiterates our commitment to fix South Africa’s failing education system where 8 out of 10 South African school children struggling to read for meaning by the age of 10, and 40% of Grade 1 learners drop out. 

To address this failure, ActionSA has adopted a suite of policies that we believe will fix the failures in our education system. But that starts by removing the ruling party from government who has failed to provide quality education for all despite 30 years in government. 

We have made it clear that our intention is to break the stranglehold of unions over our education system. Additionally, we will reintroduce school inspectors who will independently ensure that quality teaching takes place in schools across South Africa. 

Crucially, we are focused on improving teacher training and support, including for early childhood development centres. We have prioritised the urgent need for reforms that must be introduced to ensure that pupils are able to read for meaning by the fourth grade.

ActionSA believes that the only viable mechanism to improve the state of our education system is to address the structural deficiencies that have led to the decline of our education system. This begins with eliminating undue political influence and capacitating our education system with competent, well-trained, and well-paid educators.

The fact is simple: the BELA Bill will never accomplish the goal of improving our education system. We therefore invite all South Africans to come out on the 29th of May to vote out the ruling party, who are intent on pushing through this flawed Bill despite widespread valid objections.

Issued by ActionSA Western Cape Premier Candidate Angela Sobey