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The Western Cape Provincial Parliament's Standing Committee on Education today met to consider the final version of the controversial Basic Education Law Amendment (BELA) Bill, after several amendments by the NCOP. After concluding that the NCOP had not satisfactorily addressed key failures of the bill, the committee unanimously voted to reject the bill completely.

While the NCOP saw fit to make minor alterations to the bill, the committee took the view that BELA still represents a serious threat to the rights of parents, educators, and learners, and will still result in a multi-billion Rand fiscal disaster if implemented. The changes made to Clauses 2, 4, and 5 – which deal with the implementation of mandatory Grade R and language and admissions policies respectively – do not adequately address the very real concerns expressed by the public in the more than 5 000 submissions received by the committee. In particular, the new version of the BELA Bill would still unreasonably take power away from parents and educators and centralise it in the hands of unaccountable and unelected bureaucrats in Pretoria. In addition to this, there is still no answer as to how the bill will be costed and funded from either National Treasury or the Department of Basic Education. This effectively means that each province would still be liable for more than R2 billion each, per year, to implement BELA.

In addition to the inadequate changes, several clauses – including Clause 35, which places major restrictions on the ability of parents to homeschool their children – remain unchanged. Other clauses which remain problematic are Clauses 15, 17, 22, and 50 – all of which exist for no other reason than to give the national Minister of Education almost unfettered power over schooling in South Africa.

This afternoon’s session saw all three DA members of the committee vote to reject the Bill in its entirety – a view supported by the ACDP. The ANC did not attend or participate in the committee’s proceedings.

DA Western Cape Spokesperson on Education Deidré Baartman says: “Today’s meeting reaffirms the opinions expressed by the people of the Western Cape in recent weeks: BELA is a destructive and undemocratic piece of legislation which stands to give the national Minister of Education the power to override parents and educators on a whim. The Bill also stands to cost the taxpayer almost R18 billion even when not including several uncosted expenses. Throughout our deliberations as a committee, National Treasury and the Department of Basic Education were unable to answer the question of where in the fiscus that money will come from.”

“We believe that voting against this Bill represents the interests and the sentiment of the people of the Western Cape, and the interests of South Africans. We await to see if the members of the NCOP will join us in standing firm against this affront to our country.”

Issued by Deidré Baartman, MPP - DA Western Cape Spokesperson on Education