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ActionSA has submitted its objections to the Basic Education Laws Amendment (BELA) Bill in front of the houses of Parliament in Cape Town today 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.

As a party where quality education is one of its founding values, ActionSA believes the BELA Bill 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. Quality Education remains one of the best tools to enable someone to improve their lives, but the BELA Bill will unlikely achieve that goal. 

While the BELA Bill stated intentions may be admirable, the bill amounts to a power grab by the Basic Education Minister who will be enabled to set a school’s language policy regardless of what a School Governing Body (SGB) decides, and limits parents’ ability to decide whether to home-school their children. Furthermore, the Bill proposes the welcomed inclusion of mandatory Grade R for all pupils, but without a clear understanding of the curriculum framework, affordability raises concerns. 

This is why ActionSA believes a full costing of mandatory Grade R should be completed before the bill is approved by the national assembly. The conducive learning environment that home-schooling provide should be recognised, and SGB should retain control to decide the language policy of their respective schools. SGBs should also be empowered to determine and allow for religious practices at public schools while respective the rights and beliefs of all South Africans. 

ActionSA also opposes the blanket lifting of the ban on the sale of alcohol at schools proposed in the BELA Bill. And while we welcome the expansion of penalties imposed on people who disrupt schools, we must ensure that the Bill sufficiently protects the right to peaceful protest.

We are resolute in our commitment to fix South Africa’s faltering education system where 80% of public schools are deemed dysfunctional, 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. But we believe comprehensive and surgical approach is required to address these deep-rooted problems within our system. 

In line with the policies adopted at ActionSA’s inaugural policy conference, we believe that to fix the failures in our education system, the ruling party should be removed as a starting point who has failed to provide quality education for all despite 30 years in government. The stronghold of SADTU should be broken, to ensure that no union has veto right over which teachers are appointed. 

School inspectors should be reintroduced who can independently ensure that quality teaching takes place in schools across South Africa.  And teacher training and support should be improved, including for early-childhood development centres, and reforms should be introduced to ensure that pupils are able to read for meaning by the fourth grade. 

ActionSA believes our solution can turn around the decay in South Africa’s public education system, while ensuring that we increase access. It is possible for all South Africans, regardless of their race or background, to access quality education and tertiary educational opportunities. That will, however, require that every South African takes action to remove the ruling party from government and stop the BELA bill from being signed into law.

Submitted by ActionSA