Ganging up on Angie

Principals from some of the poorer schools in Western Cape have got together to try to force the government to make it possible for them to give their pupils a decent education.

The principals, and retired teacher Jean Pease, have gone to court to get an order compelling Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga and the education MECs of all nine provinces to promote early childhood development, provide learning material on time and in the right language, improve mother-tongue education in the foundation phase, and declare teaching a profession.

In their court papers, served in Cape Town on Friday, they, in essence, charge the government with failing to "respect, protect, promote and fulfil the right of all children to a basic education".

The educators have asked the Cape Town High Court to declare that the government has failed to deliver basic education and to order it to correct its failings.

They have also asked for an order that would force the government to report to the court on its progress in dealing with shortcomings in basic education.

But Panyaza Lesufi, spokesman for the Department of Basic Education, said the department had performed well in respect of the alleged failings for which it was being taken to court.

"We said that, by 2014, 80% of our schools will have universal access to early childhood development. We are now at 97%. You can't say we have not performed," said Lesufi.

"We are introducing African languages in all our schools next year ... you can't say we have not performed on that aspect."

According to the court papers, township and rural schools are especially deprived.

"The quality of education delivered by the state fails to equip the majority of learners in public schools with sufficient literacy and numeracy skills to describe them as 'basically educated', with the result that they are denied social mobility and remain trapped in poverty," said Pease in the application to the high court.

Since taking office in 2009, Motshekga and her department have been dragged to court on several occasions.

Last year, she was ordered by the Grahamstown High Court to appoint teachers and non-teaching staff to vacant posts in Eastern Cape.

She was also taken to court last year by NGO Equal Education, which wanted her to be compelled to publish a schedule of norms and standards for school infrastructure. The court ruled in favour of the NGO in July.

Last year the department failed to deliver textbooks to schools in Limpopo, resulting in the much-publicised textbook fiasco.

Pease and the principals wrote a letter of demand to Motshekga setting out their concerns but her department failed to respond.

She said "education crisis" had become "popular shorthand for the multifaceted dysfunction of the public education system".

Pease listed recent problems in education, including what she said was the need to place the education departments of Eastern Cape and Limpopo under administration, the spate of litigation against the government for the non-delivery of infrastructure and textbooks, and the disruption of schooling in Northern Cape when "learners were used as political pawns".

Among the court documents is the Global Competitiveness Report 2013-2014, which evaluates the economic competitiveness of 148 countries.

South Africa was listed at number 133 for primary education. Botswana was ranked 67th, Lesotho 99th, Swaziland 62nd and Zimbabwe was 63rd.

Research by the Centre for Development and Enterprise found that "South African teachers spend less than half of their teaching time in class each week, many often bunking classes".

The late activist and academic Neville Alexander was the "moving spirit" behind the principals' application.

On Friday, Lesufi said it was "unfortunate" that people turned to the courts without understanding the strides the department had made and what was being done to effect improvements.

"I have not yet received those [court] papers but I can tell you now, outright, that some of those issues are areas where we've performed extremely well ...

"Next year we are introducing a programme in which each and every learner will have a textbook per grade, per subject.

"No learners will be sharing textbooks," Lesufi said.