Schools will find it harder to expel "misbehaving" pupils in future thanks to a small army of budding lawyers from the University of the Western Cape.
The Chamber of Legal Students provides free legal assistance to secondary school pupils facing disciplinary hearings.
The unit was started two months ago by second-year law student Yolisa Nocanda and has since attracted 80 law students thanks to the demand for its services. Nocanda said the students had won all seven cases they had dealt with.
"What we have picked up is that schools have a blatant disregard for following processes," he said.
"We don't know if they are doing it on purpose or they just don't know how to chair hearings, or how to fairly and responsibly institute proceedings."
Today the law students will handle their biggest case yet, defending a pupil of Bosmansdam High School in Bothasig, Cape Town, who faces six charges relating to signature forgery, and the consumption and misuse of codeine. Codeine is a drug used to treat pain and diarrhoea.
Paul Colditz, chief executive of the Federation of Governing Bodies of SA Schools, said instances of proper procedure not being followed were few.
"The [school governing body] people are either teachers, principals or lay people," Colditz said. "Lawyers can do much to assist schools with these disciplinary hearings. provided they understand that [a hearing] is not adversarial, [as in a] criminal case."
- A parent of a 17-year-old pupil has written to Western Cape education MEC Debbie Schafer asking her to overturn the expulsion of her son for carrying a knife at Hermanus High School.
Her son was expelled last month.
The school claimed that the pupil brought a dangerous weapon to school, threatened another pupil and lied about the incident.
Schafer's spokesman, Jessica Shelver, confirmed that the MEC had received the appeal and would "apply [her] mind to the facts".
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