School principals in Lenasia are apparently flouting admission policies to keep poor children out of schools. But threatened legal action on behalf of the children has forced the Gauteng Department of Education to act.
Almost 30 learners living in Thembelihle, a squatter camp just outside Lenasia, south of Johannesburg, have been denied access to a number of schools because principals are claiming the schools are full. The squatter camp is severely under-resourced, with no secondary schools or electricity available in the area.
This is the second group of residents from Thembelihle to experience problems getting children into school. At the beginning of February the Thembelihle Crisis Committee, an informal group of concerned community members, went to the Centre for Applied Legal Studies (Cals) at Wits University, after trying to get the Gauteng Department of Education to intervene.
Cals then threatened the department with an urgent high court application if it failed to ”take appropriate action to accommodate these learners in appropriate schools”. Within 48 hours the department had managed to place all the learners on the list in schools.
The Thembelihle community came under the spotlight last year when the local council tried to evict residents, saying the ground was geologically unsafe to build on. Squatter camp residents claimed at the time that racist motives on the part of Lenasia’s Indian community lay behind the eviction attempt. Legal intervention on behalf of the residents squashed the eviction moves.
Zodwa Kolobile is the mother of seven-year-old Ndiblele who has been refused admission to five schools because ”they said they are full”.
She said every day Ndiblele cries to go to school but even though she is willing to pay the school fees the child was turned away.
One principal, she says ”asked me if I could pay. When I said yes, he told me to phone the next day. But when I phoned he said the school was full.” Kolobile planned to pay the school fees with money she receives from two child-care grants. ”I don’t believe that the school is full because I know of other children who went there and got in.”
Kolobile is just one of a group of 30 parents from Thembelihle whose children have been turned away on grounds that contravene the South African Schools Act. These include failure to pay registration fees or provide correct documentation.
Cals argues that the Lenasia principals acted against the provisions of the South African Schools Act and the Gauteng education department’s policies in denying access to the first group of children. The principals who verbally informed parents that the school was full had contravened the Gauteng department circular stating that schools must provide a letter informing parents in writing of the reason for refusal. The district manager is meant to declare the school full and provide a waiting list to facilitate placements.
The principal of one school refused a grade one learner entry because his parents could not afford the R400 for the registration fee, Cals found. Another gave a learner an oral test and, when the learner could not respond, he was denied admission.
According to the letter Cals sent to the department, the first school violated the Schools Act by using fee discrimination. It also said the Act ”prohibits a school from administering any test related to the admission of a learner to a public school”.
”Schools also are under the obligation to tell learners about exemptions [from fees] when parents are unable to pay,” said Siphiwe Segodi, chairperson of the committee. He said the majority of the parents cannot afford to pay school fees. ”Well, to be frank, it [refusing admission] is because of money.” He said the principals know parents from Thembelihle cannot pay school fees so they come up with ways to deny admission.
Segodi sees this as a long-term problem. Every day more learners are added to the list of children who cannot be admitted to schools in Lenasia. ”If the schools are full then the department must build more schools in Thembelihle.”
For Cals placing these learners in schools elsewhere is a short-term solution because the community of Thembelihle has to go to ”extraordinary lengths to get access to education”.
Faranaaz Veriava, a legal researcher at Cals, said: ”The department is under an obligation to provide education to all learners in the compulsory phase of education. We therefore want the department to make adequate provisions for all the learners from Thembelihle who are eligible, and to take action against those principals and governing bodies who are contravening policies by discriminating against learners because they come from a poor area.”
After the department acted on the first list it gave the Thembelihle Crisis Committee names of district officials to contact if more learners needed to be placed. On Thursday the department received the second list and told Segodi that they would act on it.
Veriava said only after the threat of the urgent application did the department react. Legal action will now be launched on behalf of the 30 learners still left stranded.
Lebelo Maloka , the MEC of Education’s spokesperson, said all the learners in Thembelihle ”who have been referred to us for admission have been placed and are assisted with free scholar transport.” Maloka said the department received the new list of learners ”who have only come into the province recently” and the district is currently placing them at schools. He did not comment on how the department enforces the policies on principals who flout them.