The Bloemfontein High Court has again ruled in favour of a Free State school that the provincial government wanted to close.
The high court ruling in March takes the northern Free State Bopasetjhaba Primary School’s two-year struggle to survive a step further. In 2003, the school received a promise from the Free State department of education to build new premises for the hundreds of learners who were then sharing buildings with pupils from another school.
But the department did not deliver, Bopasetjhaba’s school governing body (SGB) argued in court papers. Instead, in 2003 the department withdrew the SGB’s powers – apparently in an attempt to close the school.
The SGB has consistently argued that it learned of the department’s decision well after it had been made and that it was afforded no opportunity to make representations.
Assisted by Wits University’s Centre for Applied Legal Studies (Cals), the SGB took the department to the Bloemfontein High Court in mid-2003. As a result, before the matter was heard in court the department reinstated the SGB and reversed its decision to close the school.
But the promised new buildings still failed to materialise.
The court ordered in March that the department’s decision not to erect new buildings be set aside, and that the premier and the minister must ‘consider the erection of school buildings for Bopasetjhaba school and in so doing afford [the SGB] and any interested party [the opportunity] to make representations”.
Cals research officer Stuart Wilson said that Cals’s Education Law Project has received seven further requests for assistance from schools in the Free State that are under threat of closure or have been closed, and where ‘it appears that the proper legal procedures have not been followed”.
Wilson said further research is needed to see how widespread the problem may be nationally.
The provincial education department said it is ‘aware of the judgement” and exploring its options.