What The BELA Bill Means For School Governing Bodies

Stakeholders in the education sector are concerned that BELA Bill weakens school governing bodies’ power. This as the bill states that the education department will play a larger role in approving policies like admissions and language.

South Africa’s Basic Education Laws Amendment Bill (BELA Bill), has sparked debate among educators, parents, and policymakers. The bill proposes significant changes to the country’s education system, including making Grade R compulsory, revising school admission and language policies, and strengthening oversight of School Governing Bodies (SGBs).

Where a person stands can make them receptive or resistant to the bill and its provisions. Professor Mary Metcalfe believes that electioneering could be behind a lot of the pushback and misinformation being spread about the bill.

One of the continuous issues in the bill is the changing roles of governing bodies.

Clause 4 of the BELA Bill states that a school’s governing body has the authority to determine the admissions policy, but it must comply with the national and provincial education laws and the Constitution. The governing body needs to submit the policy (and any changes) to the Head of Department for approval.

The Head of Department has the final say on approving the policy or changes. They will need to consider several factors like the needs of the wider community, the best interests of the child, including equality and equity, availability of other schools in the area, school resources and efficiency and Space limitations in the school.

After consulting with the governing body, the Head of Department has the final authority to admit a student to a public school. However, there are some exceptions.

This is consistent with the proposals around language policies.

Clause 5 of the bill says the governing body of a public school has the authority to determine the language policy, following the Constitution and relevant laws. The chosen language policy must be limited to one or more of South Africa’s official languages. There are 11 official languages in South Africa according to Section 6(1) of the Constitution.

The governing body needs to submit the language policy (and any changes) to the Head of Department for approval. The Head of Department has the final say on approval.

ATM spokesperson Zama Ntshona says issues around School Governing Bodies of schools and their role in determining admission and language policies.

Do not over-regulate or micromanage yes upskill capacitate but do not take the power away from the SGBs so that the SGBs can be hands-on as communities would own the schools.

Ntshona says they are not against the education department’s intervention should it be required to rectify exclusionary policies, however, they argue that schools must be owned by communities.

We’re not anti- intervention but we are saying empower so that the school governing bodies can function

Naptosa’s Basil Manuel says the teachers’ union supports several aspects of the bill. However, they acknowledge that there are some aspects of the bill they are concerned about.

If it goes through exactly as it stands there are things we’ll have to live with but there are also gaps in terms of regulations to enforce and to make some of these things a little clearer

Manuel says there has been a lot of hype around the bill and people with vested interests may want to ensure the bill does not see the light of day. They argue that the oversight over school governing bodies is overstated.

They say Naptosa’s concerns are with the education department’s capacity to perform this oversight.

There are about 21,000 schools our problem doesn’t lie in the vetting… our issue with this is the capacity of the department to check all these policies within the time frames allowed and that is where the bigger problem lies so I’m dismissing the language policy and the admissions policy issue as a storm in a teacup quite honestly.