Education Minister Naledi Pandor and KwaZulu-Natal Education Minister Ina Cronje have been targeted in a landmark legal challenge aimed at protecting poor parents and pupils.
Wits University’s Centre for Applied Legal Studies (Cals) and two parents of children at Hunt Road Secondary School, Durban, have approached the Durban High Court to compel the school to apply the law that exempts parents too poor to pay school fees.
The respondents are Pandor, Cronje, Hunt Road school and its governing body.
The applicants want Hunt Road interdicted from suing for unpaid school fees in cases where parents qualify for exemption. They also want the court to order the school to begin processing applications for exemption, and to stop harassing or discriminating against pupils whose parents have not paid fees.
Cals advocate Faranaaz Veriava emphasised that the application was a class action, and the first of its kind. “It aims to stop the school treating anyone like it has the two parents.”
The parents, Audrey Ngubane and Emily Ngwira, are both single mothers and currently unemployed. The application says Ngubane approached Cals last year, after the sheriff’s office seized her furniture to pay fee arrears.
She had enrolled her daughter at Hunt Road in 2004, and that year managed to pay R1 400 towards registration and school fees, the application says. The school was then charging R4 400 per year.
“When she was asked how she would pay school fees, she explained that her income was meagre but that she would make payments whenever she could. She was never advised of her right to an exemption.”
At the time, Ngubane was earning R1 500 per month as an informal trader selling linen. When this fell away, she had no income other than a foster grant of R550 a month for a second dependant, her deceased sister’s daughter. Late in 2004, because of her worsening finances, she approached the school to ask about an exemption, and was told the school did not offer these.
Cals discovered the school had obtained a judgement against her for R3 000 in outstanding fees. It obtained an order rescinding this judgement in August last year.
Ngwira has nine dependants, and since 2002 has been in and out of employment as a domestic worker. According to the application, Hunt Road informed her too that it does not offer exemptions.
After learning that the school had secured judgement against Ngwira for R12 800 in unpaid fees, Cals won an order rescinding this in May this year.
Government regulations state that parents qualify for full exemption from fees if their gross annual income is less than 10 times the school fees; they qualify for partial exemption if their income is between 10 and 30 times the fees.
Schools are legally obliged to write to parents informing them of the fees and criteria and procedures for exemption. They must also notify parents who apply for exemption of the decision and its reasons within seven days of a decision.
Ngubane and Ngwira both qualify for full exemption, the application argues. It also lists 10 other parents against whom the school has obtained judgements for unpaid fees. “This suggests that the school persists in its flagrant violation of the legal framework,” said Veriava.
She added: “Cals research indicates that the failure by schools to implement the law on exemptions is nationwide and systemic.
“Schools don’t take the law seriously, because they’re not punished for flouting it. And principals have a huge reluctance to implement the policy anyway, because schools are not compensated for exemptions they grant. National and provincial ministers should be taking more steps to ensure schools enforce the law.”
Firoz Patel, Deputy Director General in the national education department, commented that schools have to “find the right balance between fees and exemption…The higher the school fees, the greater the sum lost through exemptions”.
However, Patel said the next policy review might look at the issue more closely “to decide whether there is merit in compensating schools for fee exemptions, as a way of encouraging better-resourced schools to take more learners from deprived areas”.
Ken Dixon, attorney for Hunt Road, was waiting for instructions from the school, which was closed for the holidays at the time this article was written.