The National Council of Provinces (NCOP) has deferred the Basic Education Laws Amendment (BELA) Bill to May 16, to allow for the amended committee report to be published in the parliamentary Announcements, Tabling and Committee Reports.

The NCOP was expected to pass the Bill on Thursday. The Bill seeks to make Grade R the new compulsory school-starting grade and provide for penalties when parents fail to enrol their children.

Political parties and civil society organisations have been rejecting the Bill, saying it is “regressive and flawed”.

AfriForum said it was concerned about the risks the Bill posed for Afrikaans education.

The organisation is of the view that the Bill still places the power to change schools’ language policy in the hands of provincial heads of education.

“Although the latest amendments now give school governing bodies the initial decision on schools’ language and admissions policy, final approval still rests with the provincial head of education. These amendments, therefore, do little to allay concerns about political interference,” said AfriForum.

The Democratic Alliance (DA) agreed and said even with the recent amendments, the Bill posed significant threats to the autonomy of schools and communities across South Africa.

It further added that the Bill continued to centralise power in the hands of “unelected bureaucrats”, undermining the crucial role of parents, educators and local governing bodies in shaping the educational future of their communities.

ActionSA has also raised concerns with the Bill saying, it was a “flawed” legislative attempt to “camouflage” the structural deficiencies of South Africa’s education system resulting from decades of systemic mismanagement.

ActionSA Western Cape Premier candidate Angela Sobey said her party believed the Bill fundamentally failed to address the existing challenges in the country’s education system.

“Instead, the Bill will 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 our education landscape. We have highlighted that the BELA Bill will not make the necessary inroads to improve the dysfunction within our education system, which has left nearly 80% of all schools characterised as dysfunctional,” she explained.

In April the Bill was rejected by the public at large in the National Assembly and NCOP public participation processes.