Parliament’s Portfolio Committee on Basic Education intends to approach the Speaker of the National Assembly for legal advice on its powers to compel the Western Cape Education Department (WCED) to remove certain requirements from its learner admission system, which the committee believes may be discriminatory.
The committee met on Tuesday to discuss the provincial education department’s learner admission requirements, some of which it believes could disadvantage certain learners.
These include academic performance, interviews and entrance tests, score sheets used to select top-performing learners, proof of employment, unabridged birth certificates, photographs, as well as participation in sport and leadership activities. The committee believes some of these requirements could lead to racial profiling.
“When the admissions system or practices are experienced as unfair, opaque or exclusionary, public confidence in our school system is undermined and, most importantly, learners’ rights may be placed at risk,” said Education Minister Siviwe Gwarube.
During the virtual meeting, the WCED denied the allegations, saying a departmental analysis had found no evidence of racial profiling.
The department’s Deputy Director-General for Institution Development and Coordination, Alan Meyer, said the WCED maintains active oversight of the admissions process to ensure that it does not directly or indirectly disadvantage learners through discretionary decisions.
“The [admission] outcome monitoring actively tracks admission outcomes to identify and address patterns of unfair exclusion, if there are any – for example, a school only accepting learners of a particular race,” said Meyer.
On the issue of late admission applications, Meyer said the department’s data provides “a factual, data-driven rebuttal to claims that the WCED racially discriminates in learner admissions”.
Vanessa Le Roux, a spokesperson for activist group Parents for Equal Education South Africa, said the organisation made submissions to Parliament on the matter last week.
“What we’ve complained about was two things. We can’t shy away from the fact that this doesn’t affect white children. Admission policies and admissions to schools, whichever school they apply to, it doesn’t affect them. Why not?… The second thing that we complained about is that certain schools expect children to go and write an exam as if they are applying for a job. They are taking the cream of the crop, and we are saying this is discriminatory in nature because, if you are a public school, you must be able to educate any child,” said Le Roux.
Le Roux added that there were also concerns about schools in the province requiring photographs of learners as part of the application process, saying this could have legal implications.
“Why do you need a photo of a child to consider the application? Is it to make sure? Because you can’t really say, ‘Joy is white, black, coloured or Indian’… These are minors; they are underage. What are schools doing with these children’s photos? Parents shouldn’t give schools that type of permission because… a panel is sitting with these applications. These are people that you don’t know. Who’s handling your children’s photos?” questioned Le Roux.
