Non-educator stakeholders and public-school principals' views on the proposed amendments to the South African Schools Act 84 of 1996

Abstract

On 13 October 2017, the Department of Basic Education (DBE) published Government Gazette No 41178 pertaining to the Basic Education Laws Amendment Bill (hereinafter BELA). The draft bill proposes to amend certain sections of the South African Schools Act 84 of 1996. The DBE gave education stakeholders a window period to make inputs on the proposed Bill. Over 5000 submissions were received. On 27 and 28 January 2020, Ms Angie Motshekga (Minister of Basic Education) invited the educator unions and governing body federations to further consultations on the Bill. The Bill was again circulated to the public in 2021 in Government Gazette number 45601 after further amendments. In this article, the authors discuss school principals’ (as education stakeholders) opinions on the proposed amendments with a specific focus on school admission and language policies. The research on which this article is based was located within the framework of government and management terms like the decentralisation and recentralisation of the powers of principals and school governing bodies (SGBs) and the recent phenomenon of political realism. The research took the form of a qualitative case study using triangulation (semi-structured interviews, literature review and document analysis) to gather data. The data produced mixed results. Some education stakeholders were very critical of the proposed amendments to the South African Schools Act while other groups welcomed the proposed changes. Some principals felt that the government was employing political realism in rescinding (recentralising) some of the powers that had been devolved to them in 1996 after the dawn of democracy in South Africa. They believed that the recentralisation would impede their autonomy when they carry out their professional and governance duties (the duties the school governing body delegated to the principal) in partnership with their SGBs. They believed it represented a regression to apartheid education. Other principals welcomed a more centralised governance approach where school leadership was dysfunctional and where SGBs provided no meaningful assistance to school principals.