BASIC EDUCATION: BELA-RELATED DRAFT REGULATIONS BELATEDLY UNPACKED

BASIC EDUCATION: BELA-RELATED DRAFT REGULATIONS BELATEDLY UNPACKED

• 19 August 2026
• Education & Training
• SA Legal Academy

The Department of Basic Education has issued a media statement drawing attention to the relevance of four sets of draft regulations for the effective implementation of the 2024 Basic Education Laws Amendment Act (BELA Act).

Backdated to 18 August 2026, the statement was published 13 days after three draft regulatory proposals were gazetted on 6 August 2026 for input by 5 September 2026. A fourth set of proposals was gazetted on 11 August 2026 for input by 10 September 2026. At the time of publication under the 1996 South African Schools Act, no mention was made of their implications for the BELA Act.

According to the media statement, once finalised and operationalised the draft minimum norms and standards for provincial teacher development institutes and district teacher development centres (gazetted on 6 August 2026) are expected to go some way towards ensuring that ‘teachers across the country have access to functional, safe and inclusive professional development facilities’.

Also gazetted on 6 August 2026, a notice on proposals for ‘a common national framework for the election of school governing bodies’ goes far beyond the three possible voting options to which the statement itself somewhat superficially refers. These are:

• ‘a traditional election meeting’
• manual voting at a designated venue on a designated election day, and
• ‘secure electronic voting where a school has the necessary capacity and safeguards’.

Apparently overlooked by whomever compiled the statement, this comprehensive set of proposals also seeks to prescribe a plethora of related requirements fundamental to the effective functioning of a governing body in fulfilling its mandate, including:

• eligibility for membership of a school governing body
• nomination procedures
• the role and responsibilities of:
  • a provincial elections co-ordinator
  • a district electoral officer, and
  • a school electoral officer
• associated codes of conduct
• voter eligibility and the school voters’ roll
• election processes and procedures
• post-election requirements, processes and procedures
• disputes
• removing a governing body member, and
• dissolving a governing body.

A third set of draft regulations focuses on ‘circumstances in which a school governing body seeks to compensate a state-employed educator or other qualifying state employee for genuine additional work’. It is envisaged that, once in force, any such payments – whether by way of remuneration, ‘other financial benefits’ or ‘benefits in kind’ – would be prohibited unless officially authorised and subjected to rigorous oversight. They draft regulations were gazetted on 6 August 2026.

Gazetted on 11 August 2026, the draft regulations on a national education information system propose ‘a structured national framework for collecting, verifying, storing, protecting and using education information’. According to the media statement, the system envisaged is expected to assist the authorities in:

• ‘identifying where classrooms, textbooks, educators and other resources are needed’, and
• ‘tracking whether services are reaching the schools and communities that need them most’.

Please click the links below for more details:

• media statement
• draft minimum norms and standards for provincial teacher development institutes and district teacher development centres
• draft procedures for electing school governing body members
• draft regulations on compensation for additional work
• draft regulations on a national education information system
• BELA Act

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