Non-Educator Stakeholders and Public-School Principals' Views on the Proposed Amendments to the South African Schools Act 84 of 1996

Abstract

On 13 October 2017 the Department of Basic Education (DBE) published the Basic Education Laws Amendment Bill (BELA Bill). The draft Bill aims to revise certain sections of the South African Schools Act 84 of 1996. The DBE gave education stakeholders a window period to make inputs on the proposed Bill. Over 5 000 submissions were received. On 27 and 28 January 2020 Ms Angie Motshekga (Minister of Basic Education) invited the educator unions and governing body federations to further consultations on the Bill. After further amendments the Bill was again circulated to the public in 2021. On 10 January 2022 the Bill was tabled in the National Assembly. In this article, the authors discuss school principals' (as education stakeholders) opinions on the proposed amendments with a specific focus on school admission and language policies. The article is grounded in the context of governance and management terms like the decentralisation and recentralisation of the authority and functions of principals and school governing bodies (SGBs). The research took the form of a qualitative case study using semi-structured interviews, a literature review and document analysis to gather data. The aim of the research was to explore the views of principals and non-educator stakeholders on these proposed changes to the current Schools Act. The question the research sought to answer was whether or not the principals thought that the proposed amendments would be beneficial to school management and governance in general. The data produced mixed results. Some education stakeholders were very critical of the proposed amendments to the Schools Act while other groups welcomed the proposed changes. Some principals felt that political agendas were the reason why government was rescinding (recentralising) some of the functions devolved to them in 1996 after the inception of democracy. They believed that recentralisation would impede their autonomy when they carried out their professional and governance duties (the duties delegated to principals) in partnership with their SGBs. The principals further indicated that should the BELA Bill be promulgated into law the current education system would regress to the Apartheid system of education. Other principals welcomed a more centralised governance approach where school leadership was dysfunctional and where SGBs provided no meaningful assistance to school principals.