Education matters

The Constitution affords everyone –including persons with disability – the right to education. In line with this vision, government has developed policies and interventions to ensure an inclusive education system that is available, accessible, appropriate and of good quality for children with all types of disabilities. Recently, the Department of Basic Education briefed Parliament on the progress it has made in this regard.

The Department reported that the number of special schools has almost doubled since 2002 from 295 to 464 in 2015. It is finalising the policy for learners with severe to profound intellectual disabilities in accessing support and quality education. The policy has been awarded a grant of R477 million for this year.

There are still many obstacles to developing inclusive education for children with disabilities. These include limited financial resources, poor understanding of disabilities, curriculum differentiation and prejudice. Mainstreaming of disabilities remains a priority for the Department. To this end, the progressive designation of full-service schools is in part a strategy for mainstreaming disabilities. The country has a total of 715 full-service schools. Further, the Minister has established an advisory committee made up of stakeholders in visual impairment communities who are advising it on the acceleration of the production of braille material.

MPs commended the Department on the progress that has been made and emphasised it is important to ensure that there is universal access to quality education and that no learner is found at home because they have a disability. They also voiced concern about learners who are on the waiting list, pointing out that they are running out of time and will soon reach adulthood.

The Portfolio Committee on Basic Education met with the South African Human Rights Commission to consider the report of the National Investigative Hearing into the impact of protest-related action on the right to basic education in South Africa.

The Commission reported that the majority of the problems cited by the protesters were not related to education and the schooling sector, but were due to poor service delivery. Protesters had highlighted issues relating to water, houses or infrastructure, and other social development portfolios, as the reasons behind their protests. The protests had unfairly used the schools as an outlet for civil frustration. The protesters had eventually resorted to violence and had targeted schools as means of getting attention. Concern was highlighted about the safety of teachers and learners, as well as the damage to school infrastructure. Interruption of their education was particularly difficult for children from poor or marginalised sections of society.

Broadly, the impact on children included their inability to attend school, the inability to prepare for and write examinations (especially Matriculating learners), and the inability to access school feeding programmes, which was a measure to alleviate poverty.

The main recommendation in the report was for the DBE to constitute an interdepartmental National Public Protest Response Team (National Response Team). This national body should include relevant government departments; particularly, SAPS and CoGTA and other relevant stakeholders.
The Department agreed with the challenges cited within the report but described the recommendations as un-implementable and unnecessary. The Department maintains that the issues that had motivated the protests had not been derived from Basic Education or the academic system, but rather from frustration regarding the lack of service delivery that was beyond the scope of the DBE.  These issues was mainly the responsibility of the Department of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (COGTA). The Department, therefore, appealed for the findings and recommendations to be revised to include government as a whole, as opposed to the focus of responsibility for remedial action being led by the DBE, because the Department was consequentially a victim of the protest action. The Committee was of the view that the recommendations were misdirected towards the DBE, and should be directed to the specific departments affected, such as COGTA and the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC), so that the problems could be adequately addressed and not allowed to fester.