Department ordered to consider schools language policies

The Gauteng High Court (Johannesburg) yesterday ordered the Gauteng Department of Education to take into account schools' admission and language policies when dealing with admissions for 2016, notes a News24 report. ‘Schools are entitled to prepare waiting lists A and B (for pupils)... In doing so, schools may take into account their admission and language policies,’ Judge Gregory Wright said. ‘The district director and head of department must, when considering the lists, take into account, along with other relevant and lawful considerations, the schools' admission and language policies.’ The Federation of Governing Bodies of SA Schools' (Fedsas) had applied for urgent application to halt the department's centralised admissions process and its plan to convert single-medium schools to parallel-medium schools. Fedsas argues that these unlawfully interfere with the powers of schools' governing bodies in determining the language of teaching and the schools' admission policies. Wright said his order would operate pending the final determination of ‘part B’ of the application, which dealt with the plan to convert schools, which would be heard at a later stage. Gauteng Education MEC Panyaza Lesufi recently announced plans to convert 124 single-medium schools into parallel-medium schools. It later emerged from a leaked list of the schools that the plan primarily involved Afrikaans single-medium schools.