ActionSA on Wednesday urged Basic Education Minister Siviwe Gwarube to ensure that her petition to President Cyril Ramaphosa makes clear that the Basic Education Laws Amendment (BELA) Bill, in its current form, will not make the necessary inroads to improve the “dysfunction” within the country’s education system.

Gwarube on Tuesday announced her intention to request Ramaphosa to halt signing the “flawed” BELA Bill and refer it back to Parliament, noting that the Bill should be revised to avoid hindering pupils' futures with outdated legislation.

ActionSA said now that it is represented in Parliament, it will fight to ensure that the Bill, if referred back to Parliament, reflects the “substantive” contributions and necessary amendments, including those proposed by civil society, to address the real deficiencies that have led to the decline of the country’s education system.

The BELA Bill was passed in the National Assembly on May 17 and is waiting for Ramaphosa to sign it into law.

The Bill was subject to much public opposition owing to its removal of powers from parents and giving some powers to the State.

ActionSA parliamentary caucus chief whip Lerato Ngobeni said her party had long argued that the Bill, marred by widespread objection, was “fundamentally flawed”.

She said the Bill attempted to “camouflage” the structural deficiencies of South Africa’s education system, resulting from decades of “systemic mismanagement”, and failed to address the existing challenges in the education system.

One of the key changes that the BELA Bill seeks to introduce is the strengthening of the Department of Education's oversight over language and admission policies that school governing bodies are mandated to develop.

“The ill-thought-out introduction of compulsory grade R, and the outdated use of the Socio-Economic Impact Assessment which does not adequately estimate the fiscal and economic impact of implementing the Bill, are some of the reasons why this Bill must urgently be sent back to Parliament for revision,” said Ngobeni.

She highlighted that Gwarube’s communicated intention came as a relief following the “stubborn” posture taken by the African National Congress (ANC) in the sixth administration.

She noted that the ANC was “hell-bent” on pushing through the legislation which, she said would only serve to compound the challenges by introducing a series of proposals that “lack coherence” and “fail to align with the actual needs and realities of the education landscape”.