IN THE SPOTLIGHT: BASIC EDUCATION LAWS AMENDMENT BILL

IN THE SPOTLIGHT: BASIC EDUCATION LAWS AMENDMENT BILL

• 30 April 2024
• In the Spotlight
• SA Legal Academy

Please note: On 10 May 2024, the NCOP issued a backdated media statement explaining why it deferred consideration of the Basic Education Laws Amendment Bill to 16 May 2024. The report below should be read with that in mind. 

Parliament still has some way to go before concluding the already long, often tortuous process of finalising the Basic Education Laws Amendment Bill. Several steps remain:

• the Bill’s ‘B’ version will need to be revised to incorporate changes agreed on 24 April 2024 by the NCOP’s Education & Technology, Sports, Arts & Culture Committee
• the committee will need to meet to consider and adopt a report on the process followed in arriving at those changes
• the report and revised Bill will need to be tabled in the NCOP for consideration and endorsement
• if endorsed, the revised Bill incorporating changes made by the NCOP committee will need to be sent to the National Assembly’s Basic Education Committee for concurrence
• the National Assembly committee will need to consider the revised Bill and either agree to or reject the changes made
• that committee will then need to table a report in the House recommending that the revised Bill either be passed or rejected
• the House will then need to consider the committee’s recommendations and:
  • either pass the Bill (in which case it will be sent to the President for signature), or
  • reject the NCOP’s changes (in which case the Bill will need to be subjected to a parliamentary mediation process).

Given that some changes recommended by the NCOP committee are material, it seems more than likely that – if adopted by the NCOP itself (a foregone conclusion) – concurrence will need to be sought from the National Assembly’s incoming, post elections Basic Education Committee. This is because the sixth democratic Parliament’s National Assembly and its committees rose at the end of March 2024 to attend to pre-elections constituency work. Only after the elections and the official opening of South Africa’s seventh democratic Parliament will newly elected MPs be assigned to National Assembly committees.

However, it is apparently not beyond the realms of possibility that – between one National Assembly rising at the end of its five-year term and another being constituted after a general election – a Bill changed by the NCOP before the end of its five-year term is endorsed without the National Assembly committee concerned officially considering the changes made.

By way of example, it is still not clear why the Housing Consumer Protection Bill was allowed to circumvent the usual mandatory processing procedures described above. Passed by the NCOP on 25 April 2024 with changes, it was sent to the already risen National Assembly committee concerned for concurrence and almost immediately adopted (presumably by round robin). A committee report endorsing the NCOP’s changes was then tabled in the National Assembly – within less than 24 hours on, 26 April 2024 to be precise. Perhaps – in circumstances such as these – parliamentary rules and procedures do not apply to NCOP changes that are simply technical, which was the case with the Housing Consumer Protection Bill.

However, if the same thing happens to the Basic Education Laws Amendment Bill (to which the NCOP committee is proposing substantive changes) questions will need to be asked because about the legitimacy fo the procedures followed. That particular piece of legislation has been a source of controversy from the time it was tabled in January 2022 – mainly because, among many other things, it has significant implications for:

• determining the language policy of a state school
• the powers of a state school governing body, and
• home schooling.

The Bill also seeks to:

• make Grade R the new compulsory school-starting age
• penalise parents or guardians ‘who do not ensure their children are in school’, and
• strengthen existing provisions prohibiting corporal punishment by making it an offence with ‘penalties for those found guilty’.

SA Legal Academy will keep its newsletter subscribers informed.

• Basic Education Laws Amendment Bill’s ‘B’ version (passed by the National Assembly on 26 October 2023)
• ‘C’ list, reflecting changes adopted on 25 April 2024 by the NCOP committee
• ‘D’ version (incorporating those changes)
• parliamentary papers (see page 29 for the correct version of the NCOP committee report, replacing one tabled on 2 May 2024)
• SA Legal Academy report on the Housing Consumer Protection Bill

Published by SA Legal Academy Policy Watch

Follow us on X @SALegalAcademy (you can also join us on LinkedIn and Facebook)

0 COMMENTS

LEAVE A COMMENT