The Basic Education Department says it wants to increase the penalty for parents and guardians from six months to six years imprisonment who do not ensure that their children are in school. This as the department continues having engagements with stakeholders on the Basic Education Laws Amendment (BELA) Bill, which seeks to amend sections of the South African Schools Act.
The Bill was published in the Government Gazette in 2017 and requires that parents who wish to home educate their children register with the department in order to formalise the medium.
Currently, Section 3 of the South African Schools Act provides that parents who do not ensure that their children attend school from the age of seven until the learner reaches the age of 15 or Grade 9, will be guilty of an offence and liable on conviction to a fine or imprisonment for a period not exceeding six months. However, the BELA Bill seeks to extend the penalty to six years.
Section 51 of the Act also prescribes that children be registered with the department through their relevant Provincial Education Departments (PEDs) after which the HOD will either reject or approve the application.
Other changes include that the content and skills of the curriculum to be used by home learners must be at least comparable to the national curriculum and not of inferior quality to the education the learner would receive at a public school, and that home learners must be assessed annually by registered assessors at the parent’s own cost.
However, of the about 100 000 home scholars that are in South Africa, only 1 500 are registered with the Department of Basic Education. This is according to a national census on home education conducted in 2011.
Department Spokesperson, Elijah Mhlanga says they want the law to protect children.
“We want all parents who wish to take their children out of mainstream schools to register them so that we can know how many there are and where they are in order for us to be able to monitor learning and teaching which will be happening in the home. So we require registration to happen, but we also want the law to protect the children by ensuring that any parent who prevents a child from accessing education faces a sentence of up to six years because we are aware that there are several children around the country who are not in school and there are no valid reasons given for that.”
This call has ruffled the feathers of some. The Association for Homeschooling has rejected the BELA Bill saying requiring parents to request permission from the department to home school their children is an absurd demand and unreasonable interference in the child’s right to parental care. Shaun Green of the association says the Bill is not practical or beneficial.
“The Association rejects the idea that parents need to ask permission to be responsible parents. Home education is totally different to school education. It is not practical or beneficial to expect a home-schooling family to behave as if it were a school. This causes misunderstanding on the part of officials at the Department of Basic Education who generally have little knowledge or experience of home education. The regulatory framework for home education is flawed because of this. This, unfortunately, does not promote a relationship of trust and has led to the current low levels of registration.”
Parents opting for the medium have highlighted some concerns that they have with mainstream education in the country. Former home-schooling mother, Charlotte Kenny, home-schooled her son and daughter from Grades 1 to Grade 2. She lists some of the reasons that led to her opting for home education instead of mainstream schools.
“It was my intention to actually home-school foundation phase so the Grade 1s, 2s and 3s because I’m a reading therapist and I’ve seen so many kids in the foundation phase unable to read, just not having the correct foundation and I wanted to change that for my kids. The other factor was that they had travelled a lot and it just gave us the flexibility to be with them more. And then I looked at the cost comparison; home-schooling is just so much cheaper than mainstream school and private school at that.”
Mhlanga says registration is important for it to track the progress made by home scholars, particularly when they enter mainstream education.
“You continue to home educate your child and then when you get stuck, you want to return your child to mainstream education. When you do that, we were not aware which curriculum you were using in the home; we are not aware of the children’s progress. We wouldn’t be able to assist you to place the child at the right Grade. And if we cannot do that, we’re already putting that child at a disadvantage. We need proper documents that show that the learner was learning and the levels that the learner has achieved so that we’re able to assist you,” says Mhlanga.
The department also says it has noted the use of so-called home-schooling centres. According to its policy, home learning is only supposed to take place in the home and with the parent taking the responsibility of the teacher. However, should parents struggle with some aspects of learning, they can enlist the assistance of a tutor but this should not override the parents’ role. It says, therefore, that the institutions operating as home-schooling centres are illegal as that constitutes private schooling.
