JONATHAN MOLVER: Education bill is necessary, but fails to synchronise aspirations and reality

The school and educator legislation revision initiated in 2013 led to the publication of the Basic Education Law Amendment (Bela) Bill in 2017. Public hearings concluded on April 4, and the department has since announced that it will be proceeding with the revisions despite widespread opposition from the public and other political parties.

The National Council of Provinces received altogether 38,170 consultation submissions, with a large number of clauses contested. While some have rejected the bill outright, on close inspection the proposed amendments appear to be grounded in evidence and well placed to strengthen SA’s basic education sector. The challenge with the bill lies not in the proposed revisions, but in the department’s ability to implement them effectively at scale.

The proposed revisions are both good and necessary, seeking to strengthen governance by addressing sections that have proven challenging for the sector. The department has used monitoring data to review challenges with regard to governance, accountability, access and quality, and has through a process of consultation proposed revisions to the SA Schools Act that will ostensibly ensure greater access, better quality and strengthened accountability across the system.

This is evident in each of the 56 clauses in the bill. To illustrate the sound approach in developing the amendments, I will take a brief look at three of these. Clause 2 outlines compulsory school attendance beginning in grade R. This should be received as a necessary and important change given all we know about the benefits of early access to schooling on longer-term learning outcomes.

Clause 39 seeks to increase accountability for school governing bodies. Key amendments include “to provide that the head of department may, on reasonable grounds, dissolve a governing body that has ceased to perform its functions”, “to further regulate the circumstances under which a governing body may pay additional remuneration or give any other financial benefit or benefit in kind to a state employee”, and “to extend the powers of the head of department to conduct an investigation into the financial affairs of a public school”.

Given the high levels of fraud, nepotism, cronyism and corruption on governing bodies, this should be an amendment that we all welcome.

Clauses 4 and 5 (perhaps the most significant amendments) propose “to provide that the governing body of a public school must submit the admission and language policies of the public school to the head of department for approval”. The reality is that the right to determine admissions, languages and fees has allowed predominantly white and privileged communities to maintain and “protect” their school intake.

Only recently have many begun adapting their admissions and language policies (often under duress from provincial governments) to encourage a more diverse intake of pupils. This amendment is a bold and radical move to drive equity and inclusion by limiting the powers of governing bodies to in effect exclude on the basis of race, language and academic performance.

The unfortunate part is that the bill appears to be another classic case of ideological aspirations, built on evidence, that do not align with reality when we consider implementation. Put differently — the challenge with Bela lies not in whether these amendment should be adopted, but rather with how they will be implemented.

Let’s go back to the proposal to make grade R schooling compulsory for every child. The amendment considers the importance of attending formal schooling from an early age. But it does not appear to have considered the cost of implementation. The financial burden of compulsory grade R schooling has been calculated at R5.12bn (in 2022). The infrastructure cost alone is estimated at R12bn, and yet there is no breakdown for this in terms of salaries, training and materials.

It is also unclear what consideration has been given to the quality and rigour of grade R schooling, and the subsequent increase in administrative oversight this will be required from provincial education departments. If it is to be successful, the introduction of compulsory grade R schooling should follow a phased approach based on resource availability and comprehensive planning.

The same is true for the clauses on strengthened accountability. Though absolutely necessary, these amendments have also overlooked the need to create delivery capacity to scale. For example, heads of department have long held the power to remove functions from governing bodies, which have also long been subject to financial audits. Yet fraud and corruption are still rife in schools. The reality is that departments don’t have the capacity to rigorously monitor and regulate governing bodies. Changing the act won’t suddenly change this. If we are going strengthen accountability, we need to build the institutional capacity to do so.

Admissions and language policies

The most controversial clauses of Bela are the amendments to admissions and language policies. These have been perceived as an assault on Afrikaans-only medium schools, as the sections require that admission and language policies are submitted to the department and give it the final authority on both admissions and the language of education at a schools.

Every child deserves the right to attend a school where the language of instruction is their mother tongue, and this right should be preserved for all. But this right must be balanced with the right for every child to attend a quality school near their place of residence. There is often a fine line between realising the right to be taught in one’s home language, and the benefits and cultural promotion and preservation that this represents, and excluding pupils from schools that are more geographically accessible.

These sections of the act mitigate for this tension by making provision for extensive public notice, public participation, provision of clear grounds for decisions and appeal processes. These are necessary measures that once again highlight the administrative burden this will place on an already strained system.

The temptation, particularly with education, is to throw the baby out with the bathwater. We must avoid doing this with Bela. The bill has made a good start with an evidence-based and consultation-driven approach. But if the amendments are to be effective, sustained and scaled we need to do more. Critically, we need to realistically reflect on how to develop the capacity required to deliver at scale, and then support this with robust plans and realistic budgets. These plans should be backed up with rigorous monitoring and evaluation frameworks that track implementation, extract key lessons, and use these to iterate, adapt and improve.

If we can begin to move from ideology to action we might just begin to see the first green shoots of lasting change and transformation that we’ve all been waiting for — and we may just be able to hang on to that bathwater we so desperately need.

• Molver, a former UK primary school principal, is founding director of Proteus, which works with government, the private sector and civil society to build stronger, more equitable education systems.