\n \t\t\t \t\t\t
![\"Copy](\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/plugins\/rss-poster\/cache\/f059b_1588294109.jpg\")
<\/p>\n \t
\n \t\t\t \t\t\t <\/p>\n
INLSA<\/p>\n
Advocate Paul Hoffman SC, Director of the Institute for Accountability in Southern Africa.<\/p>\n
\n
\t\t \t\t \t\t\t\t\t \t\t \t\t <\/p>\n
Academics and activists are preparing to take the government to court to ensure that the rights of all children to basic education becomes a reality. The legal action is to be launched by the Institute for Accountability in Southern Africa on behalf of the Public Participation in Education Network. <\/p>\n
The institute\u2019s director, advocate Paul Hoffman SC, said he expected \u201cthe mother and father of all court cases\u201d as he led the charge to hold the Basic Education Department accountable for failing to deliver on the promise enshrined in the Bill of Rights. <\/p>\n
Hoffmann outlined the group\u2019s plans for the public interest litigation at the Southern African Heads of Independent Schools Association (Sahisa) in Durban this week. <\/p>\n
While NGOs, such as Equal Education and Section 27, lock legal horns with Minister Angie Motshekga over norms and standards for schools, and the Limpopo textbook saga, the action spearheaded by Hoffman will go beyond a \u201csingle issue\u201d case. <\/p>\n
He argued that schools in the three lower quintiles \u2013 those of the townships, rural areas and former homelands \u2013 were providing a \u201cbabysitting\u201d service rather than educating pupils. <\/p>\n
Citing statistics from the research of economist Nic Spaull and others, Hoffman said that in 1996, 1.19 million six-year-old black children started Grade 1. Twelve years later, 278 000 were awarded a Grade 12 certificate. <\/p>\n
But only 42 000 of those |278 000 were able to pass a post-matric functional literacy test. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe cannot go on like this. It\u2019s impossible. We are setting ourselves up to become a failed state if we neglect what\u2019s needed in the lower three quintiles,\u201d Hoffman said. <\/p>\n
And that, he believed, was \u201ca little bit of accountability… perhaps a lot\u201d. <\/p>\n
As well as arguing for pupils to be educated in their mother tongue up until at least Grade 6, Hoffman revealed that his scope would include school infrastructure, and the professionalisation of public school teachers. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt involves doing something about our friends, Sadtu (the SA Democratic Teachers Union), thinking they can strike whenever they like,\u201d Hoffman hinted. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re also going to tackle the two-hump camel,\u201d he said, contending that SA had two education systems. <\/p>\n
The suggestion was that having one set of policies for all schools was \u201cinappropriate\u201d. <\/p>\n
Hoffman did, however, give the government credit for undertaking the \u201cHerculean\u201d task of restructuring post-apartheid education by converting 14 separate systems of education into one. <\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of good work has been done. The problem today is there\u2019s too much experimenting and not enough emphasis on the basics.\u201d <\/p>\n
Hoffman said the application would be launched in the Northern Cape High Court, and was set to institute proceedings within a month. <\/p>\n
Late Struggle veteran and academic Neville Alexander was a member of the network, as is John Samuel, the adviser to the vice-chancellor of the University of Free State, Jonathan Jansen. <\/p>\n
Samuel affirmed that quality of education was tied to access to education. <\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s no point to children being in school if they\u2019re not adequately educated.\u201d <\/p>\n
Samuel believed it was \u201cprimarily the absence of political will on the part of government\u201d that was at the root of the failure to improve the education system. <\/p>\n
Enver Motala, of the Mandela Institute for Rural Education and Development at the University of Fort Hare, said the network had been born of the concern which people such as he, Alexander, Samuel and others shared on the crisis in the public schooling system. <\/p>\n
It would also focus on how the quality of public schooling was becoming \u201cincreasingly differentiated between rich and poor kids\u201d, and the need for a new and more publicly engaged discussion beyond the \u201cyearly charade around matric results\u201d. <\/p>\n
Motala said that it had become necessary to intervene, through the courts, for the government to do what was required to provide good quality public education. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
INLSA Advocate Paul Hoffman SC, Director of the Institute for Accountability in Southern Africa. Academics and activists are preparing to take the government to court to ensure that the rights of all children to basic education becomes a reality. The legal action is to be launched by the Institute for Accountability in Southern Africa on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[8275,953,2143],"class_list":{"0":"post-14624","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-south-africa","7":"tag-durban","8":"tag-newspaper","9":"tag-the-mercury","10":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14624","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14624"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14624\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14624"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14624"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14624"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}