SA’s two biggest teachers’ unions have pushed back against the guidelines for implementing the Basic Education Laws Amendment (Bela) Act published by basic education minister Siviwe Gwarube last week, saying they carry no legal weight and cannot be enforced.
The guidelines, approved by the Council of Education Ministers, are intended to help provincial education departments bring the act’s provisions into effect.
But the SA Democratic Teachers Union (Sadtu) and the National Professional Teachers’ Organisation of SA (Naptosa) say the act empowers the minister to craft regulations, not guidelines.
Gwarube told parliament on Tuesday morning that the guidelines would only be in place until regulations to the act had been finalised.
Draft regulations would be released for public comment by the end of June, she said.
A document detailing the guidelines says they are intended to provide clarity on aspects of the act, including some of its most controversial provisions dealing with schools’ language and admission policies. They also cover the new legal requirement extending compulsory schooling by a year to include grade R, and measures that provide for greater oversight of home schooling.
Sadtu, SA’s largest teachers’ union, urged its members who serve on school governing bodies to ignore the guidelines.
It called on the minister to retract them, saying: “Sadtu can only deduce from her actions that the minister is seeking to cause confusion with her political gimmick of pushing her DA’s agenda of the Bela Act ... we are well aware of their tactics trying to halt its full implementation.”
The DA opposed the bill when it was before parliament, flagging concerns about the powers given to the provincial head of education to override school governing bodies’ decisions on language and admission policies.
The fact that the guidelines were not legally binding ran the risk that provinces would implement them inconsistently, said Lorvica Matthew, Naptosa’s membership and communications executive officer. This risk was particularly acute for the sections dealing with language and admission policies, and the powers of school governing bodies, she said.
Naptosa was also concerned about the guidelines’ recommendation that early childhood development centres offering grade R register as independent schools, as it was unfeasible for many underresourced centres to do so without considerable support, she said.
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