Education expert: BELA Act will cover ‘more loopholes' in legislation
The Basic Education Laws
Amendment Act will cover many loopholes in the existing legal framework in the
country's education system.
That is the view of local education expert Professor Wayne Hugo after Friday’s signing of the bill into law.
It comes into effect immediately, except for two contentious clauses on admission and language policies whose implementation has been delayed for three months.
The amendments to the Schools Act include making Grade R compulsory.
Professor Hugo, who is with UKZN, says at the heart of the act is the protection and improvement of pupils’ rights to access education.
But he fears it may do more harm than good.
"You hear a thing like Grade R and the BELA Act, and you go ‘yay’ that is absolutely brilliant and then you check where the funding is going come from, how are they going to fund all the extra teachers that are needed in Grade R? Where is the classroom funding going to come from for the classrooms that are needed?
"We are going to have to use the same amount of money to do more and more things because you are putting more and more pressure to do more and more things for our country, which actually means with the intention of doing good, you could actually end up doing bad."
READ: Ramaphosa says Gwarube's absence at BELA Bill signing ‘a minor issue’
Hugo adds that more education is needed around what the Act seeks to achieve.
"There has been a lot of misinformation about it. What people are not getting is that the act is constitutional, as far as I can tell. It is correct. On that level, there is a lot of public discourse which is negative about it, which is really misinformed, and that is the key thing we need to get right about public debates on the act at the moment."
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