Should parents do community service for not sending their children to school?

Parents who fail to send their children to school should “in extreme cases” be forced to do 12 months community service.

This is the view of the Malihambe Seventh Day Adventist Church which made an oral submission during the third round of hearings on the Basic Education Laws Amendment (Bela) Bill in parliament on Tuesday.

The bill proposes to amend the South African Schools Act and Employment of Educators Act “to align them with developments in the education landscape”.

The amendments propose increasing the term of imprisonment for parents found guilty of not sending their children to school from six to 12 months.

“Simply increasing it may not take away the problem. We recommend the department replace the penalty clause with compulsory counselling and attendance of psychosocial support programmes.”

The Governing Body Foundation (GBF), which has 810 members, is also not in favour of “criminalising” parents who fail to send their children to school.

Anthea Cereseto, CEO of the GBF, said there were better ways of handling the issue, adding: “In almost all cases there are other factors at play, not an unwillingness to send the child to school, for example, pyscho-social and economic conditions.”

She also expressed concern about a contentious clause giving the head of a provincial education department the “final authority” to admit a pupil to a public school.

“The GBF accepts reluctantly and with some reservations that final authority for admission is given to the head of department after consultation with the governing body and after following prescribed processes for language changes. We expect good faith.”

She said they rejected the duty given to governing bodies to perform school day-to-day operational functions of monitoring pupil attendance and applying interventions.

“The school management and provincial education department must handle the monitoring of learner attendance.”

She said they supported the inclusion of grade R in basic education “but that the amendment cannot be passed until grade R can be fully funded and resourced”.

Cereseto said provision must be made for regulating online schooling in the same way homeschooling is regulated.

“This is urgent as unregulated online schooling is already happening.”

LearnFree said they support the call by the South African Human Rights Commission for online schooling to be included in the bill.

It proposed that a section dealing with pupils with disabilities be incorporated in the bill.

Trade union Solidarity said amendments proposed in the bill “are an attack on functional schools, especially schools within the Afrikaans community, which have been successfully governed by governing bodies”.

“The passing of the Bela bill would revert much of the framework concerning the governance of a public school back to resemble the bureaucratic system in which state schools were governed pre-1992.”

It said parents and communities who are the main stakeholders in the education of their children will only be granted limited rights.

“This would not serve the intention as set out in the constitution.”

Solidarity said financially able and academically strong schools “may relieve the department of a burden by becoming independent, which will allow the various education departments to focus their resources on schools that may need more guidance and assistance”.

“The Bela bill is a clear move towards authoritarian at best, and/or dictatorial at worst, style of governance. The proposed bill clearly is an attempt by government and the department to centralise the education system and move towards a pre-1994 education style regime.”