Pupils smacked down for standing up for rights

Despite the national outcry triggered by the Limpopo school textbook crisis in 2012, the education bureaucracy continues to fail our children.

Earlier this month, the Pretoria High Court ruled that the government had violated the right to education of pupils at 39 schools - again in Limpopo - that had not received all their textbooks on time.

As the mid-year exams loomed, the provincial education department - which had shamelessly tried to blame its failure on the schools' principals - committed itself to new deadlines for delivering the books.

Today we report on another, even more farcical, failure.

Five matric pupils at a school in Gauteng, who had been without a maths teacher since February 4, and whose complaints fell on deaf ears, have been suspended.

After The Times reported on their plight the department appointed a mathematics teacher but the pupils were suspended for taking their grievance to the provincial education department during school hours without the proper permission, and for bringing the school into disrepute by speaking to this newspaper.

It goes without saying that school rules need to be obeyed and that pupils should not be encouraged to flout them.

But punishing matrics who took the initiative by drawing attention, as their June exams approached, to the fact that they had been without a teacher in a key subject for far too long is nonsensical.

This farcical situation would not have arisen had the school been adequately resourced and the original maths teacher promptly replaced.

At how many other schools around the country over the decades have pupils had no choice but to suffer in silence, without teachers in critical subjects?

Education authorities, principals and teachers have a duty to ensure that the children in their care have access to a proper education.

Not tomorrow - now.