Judgment delayed in Equal Education case
School infrastructure needs to fulfil right to dignity of pupils
JUDGMENT in Equal Education (EE) norms and standards court battle with Minister of Education, Angie Motshekga, has been delayed for another two days. Judgment was supposed to be delivered yesterday by the Bisho High Court, in the Eastern Cape. It was postponed until tomorrow.
Four months ago, EE approached the court to compel the government to meet its school infrastructure targets set to fulfil the rights to dignity, equality, education and the best interests of the child.
In the court proceedings EE’s lawyers, advocate Geoff Budlender, senior counsel, argued that based on the wording of the school infrastructure law it meant that pupils should expect “some unspecified person” to fix their school “at some unspecified time”.
“Our submissions to the court were that the right to basic education is uniquely framed in the constitution, and is immediately realisable. That the infrastructure law allows the State to escape the duty to actually fix schools, constitutes an unjustified limitation on the right, and ought to be corrected by the court,” said EE.
The organisation in its court papers argued against a clause in the norms and standards.
“The escape clause is a section of the norms and standards law that says that the Department of Education is only responsible for the fixing of schools to the extent that other parts of the State, such as Eskom or Public Works, co-operate and make resources available,” EE submitted.
EE also asked that the court order Motshekga to insert a clause into the law that required all infrastructure plans and reports be made publicly available within a reasonable period like six months.
Based on the department’s National Education Infrastructure Management System, EE said the number of schools that have no water had decreased by 1 601, over the past three years.
However, the number of schools with an unreliable water supply had increased by 2 350.
EE said the re-categorisation of schools from having no supply of water and electricity to having an unreliable supply could be due to unreliable data, shifting definitions of what constitutes access to basic services, and incomplete or limited upgrades to basic services.