Newly appointed Basic Education Minister Siviwe Gwarube is hoping President Cyril Ramaphosa will take heed of the request to refer the contentious Basic Education Laws Amendment Bill (Bela Bill) back to Parliament. Picture: Independent Newspapers Archive
Newly appointed Basic Education Minister Siviwe Gwarube is hoping President Cyril Ramaphosa will take heed of the request to refer the contentious Basic Education Laws Amendment Bill (Bela Bill) back to Parliament.
The Amendment Bill was passed by the National Assembly in May and only awaited the president’s signature.
The DA, other political parties and civil organisations had rejected the bill and threatened to challenge it in court.
The ANC, SA Democratic Teachers’ Union (Sadtu) and other unions supported the bill under former minister Angie Motshekga.
Gwarube is hoping Ramaphosa will allow for the bill to be reviewed and those parts that were rejected to be “fixed”. She said the bill should be revised to avoid hindering pupils’ futures with outdated legislation.
“We don’t want to throw the entire bill out but there are sections of the bill that we’re very much against. Fix the areas that are problematic that speak to the powers of the SGBs (school governing bodies), but also we’ve got to keep certain elements that talk about getting ECDs (early childhood development) formally into the system.”
At a media briefing on Wednesday ahead of the opening of Parliament, DA leader and MP John Steenhuisen said while their new role may have evolved, their party has not changed.
“This means that we will continue to fight against problematic national policies and legislation such as the National Health Insurance Act (NHI), the Basic Education Laws Amendment (Bela) Bill, and any proposal which is anti-constitutional or seeks to divide and regress South Africans,” he said.
Deputy academic leader of the School of Education at the University of KwaZulu-Natal Professor Vimolan Mudaly said important sections in the bill needed to be addressed.
“It will be interesting to see how the DA-aligned minister navigates through the bill. Hopefully, the highest educational achievement for our learners will always be the goal and Parliament sees the sense in meritoriously accepting or rejecting all or parts of the bill,” he said.
ActionSA chief whip Lerato Ngobeni said they had long argued that the Bela Bill was a flawed legislative attempt to camouflage the structural deficiencies of the education system resulting from decades of systemic mismanagement.
“The minister’s communicated intention comes as a relief following the stubborn posture taken by the ANC in the 6th administration.”
“From disempowering parents and SGBs, to the blanket lifting of the ban on the sale of alcohol at schools, granting DBE unilateral powers to set a school’s language, the ill-thought-out introduction of compulsory grade R, and the outdated use of the Socio-Economic Impact Assessment which does not adequately estimate the fiscal and economic impact of implementing the bill, these are some of the reasons why this bill must urgently be sent back to Parliament for revision,” said Ngobeni.
Build One South Africa (Bosa) leader Mmusi Maimane said the public education system needed “a full overhaul to dismantle the dual system that exists ...
The immediate steps should include scrapping the 30% pass mark for subjects and scrapping the Bela Bill.”
Solidarity Research Institute researcher Johnell Prinsloo also feels the bill should be reviewed, and said the clauses dealing with language and admission policy were rejected.
Cape Times