South Africa – The Basic Education Laws Amendment (BELA) Bill’s approval by the National Assembly has drawn mixed reactions from the public, attracting both support and opposition. However, it has faced substantial backlash from parents, educators, and civil society organisations.
Casey Gerathy, a SACE-registered educator and owner of a cottage school, has voiced serious concerns about the potential impacts of this bill on children, parents, and the diversity of education in the country.
Despite its passage by the National Assembly, the bill still requires President Ramaphosa’s signature to become law. Consequently, Gerathy has urged parents, educational institutions, and concerned citizens to contact the President directly, encouraging him to reassess the bill and request further scrutiny before proceeding.
“There is an email address that you can send an email to the president, asking him to please not sign the bill but rather to send it back, ask for comprehensive studies into education, into what will truly help education, and that an entirely new bill be drafted … if we can have an overwhelming response there, we may be able to get the President to say maybe I shouldn’t sign this.”
The Implications of the BELA Bill
For years, this bill has faced opposition from parents, educators, political parties, and civil organisations in all its iterations. While some individuals support the bill and eagerly await the President’s formal approval, Gerathy has expressed significant frustration and disappointment following its passage.
She argues that the bill’s stringent regulations and mandates could suppress educational diversity by not accommodating alternative educational systems like homeschooling and private schooling.
The bill’s insistence on a uniform and standardised curriculum, which Gerathy believes is suboptimal for teaching and learning, will limit the ability to offer personalised or varied educational approaches that address children’s diverse needs.
“By putting this bill into effect or by signing this bill into law, what they’re saying is we want the entire country to have the same dumbed down level of education. We will not allow anybody to look for anything better, try and find anything better, or spend time researching or doing our own thing. This is terrible for homeschoolers, it’s terrible for parents, and it’s detrimental to education as a whole.”
Furthermore, Gerathy raised serious concerns that the bill would enable the Department of Education to supersede school governing bodies, potentially substituting them with its appointees. She warned that this action would essentially erode parental rights to choose school governors and diminish their influence over crucial decisions affecting their children’s education.
“It gets to a point where parents are going to have as little say as the government can allow them to have. They want to create a state where every child is treated as a ward of the state, not treated as an individual with parents who know them better than the state does and who want what’s best for them. Most children are raised by parents who want what is best for them, who want to see them achieve and do well, and this bill is there. Everything about the bill is preventing that from happening.”
