<div dir="ltr"><h1 class="">Challenge to elite South African schools that segregate by language</h1>
<h2 class="">
<p>Courts will decide whether Fochville High can offer instruction only in Afrikaans, which blacks mostly do not speak.</p></h2>
<p class="">
By
<span class="">Kenichi Serino</span>, <span class="">Correspondent</span> /
June 18, 2013
</p>
<div id="storyToolbar_0" class="">
<div id="sTul_0" class="">
<a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Africa/2013/0618/Challenge-to-elite-South-African-schools-that-segregate-by-language#" title="Facebook" class="" id="tFacebook_0"><span class=""><span class=""></span></span></a><a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Africa/2013/0618/Challenge-to-elite-South-African-schools-that-segregate-by-language#" title="Email" target="_blank" id="tEmail_0" class=""><span class=""><span class=""><br>
</span></span></a>
</div>
</div>
<div class="">
<p class="">
Johannesburg</p>
</div>
<p>A majority-white <a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/South+Africa" target="_self" class="">South African</a>
public school has drawn accusations of trying to segregate itself from
the black population through its language policy, touching off a court
battle that could eventually impact the racial makeup of some of the
country's best public schools.</p>
<div class=""><div class="">
<div id="ad_unit" class=""><table class=""><tbody><tr height="5%"><td><br></td></tr><tr><td><br></td></tr></tbody></table></div></div></div><p>Fochville High School, about 50 miles from Johannesburg, is a
former "Model C" school – a whites-only institution under apartheid that
has since opened its doors to black students.</p><p>The former Model
C’s are in high demand as they offer a quality education and low class
sizes. Because they are mostly state-funded, they offer this quality
education to South Africans of all races who cannot afford private
schools for their children.</p>
<div class="">
<p class="">
</p><p class="">
</p>
</div>
<p>The former Model C’s are also very attractive because of their
results. According to the national department of basic education, in
2009 they had a high school graduation rate of 93.7 percent, across all
races. Formerly black African-only schools had a pass rate of just 52.9
percent.</p><p>However, some former Model C’s in South Africa have drawn
criticism that while they now have black students, they have also
implemented policies that favor access for whites.</p><p>According to
2009 data from the national department of education, some 49 percent of
students at former Model C's were white, 30 percent were black African,
15 percent were mix-raced and 3.5 percent were Indian.</p><p>In the case
of Fochville High, the barrier for many blacks is the school's policy
of teaching classes and conducting its administration exclusively in
Afrikaans, primarily the language of Afrikaners, a white ethnic group.</p><p>The
provincial department of education is now suing Fochville High to
compel it to teach courses not just in Afrikaans but also English, a
more common second language spoken by black students in the area.</p><p>Fochville is one of two major court cases in South Africa related to admissions policy.</p><p>Late this spring the nation's Constitutional Court, somewhat equivalent to the <a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/U.S.+Supreme+Court" target="_self" class="">US Supreme Court</a>,
heard arguments related to Rivonia Primary School. That case stems from
a dispute between the school and the provincial department of
education.</p><p>The government has argued that Rivonia is under-enrolled, while thousands of children in its district are without places.</p><p>The
school has countered that the law gives it the right to set its own
admissions policy and small class sizes are necessary to maintain the
quality of education offered.</p><p>The philosophical question of who
has final control over schools and school admissions makes this an
important case says Pierre de Vos, a professor of constitutional law at
the University of Cape Town.</p><p>"There’s a tension between them
because on the one hand, everybody has a right to education,” said de
Vos. “On the other hand, the governing body wants to feel they have some
say in the matter. It’s difficult to balance these two fundamentals.”</p><p>This
is not the first time an Afrikaans-medium former Model C has found
itself in court over its admissions policy. In 2009, the Constitutional
Court ruled for Ermelo High School against the provincial government who
had ordered them to offer classes in English.</p><p>The court's finding for <a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/Ermelo" target="_self" class="">Ermelo</a>
was on a procedural matter, however, that did not reach the substance
of equal access. However, Deputy Chief Justice Dikgang Moseneke, writing
for a unanimous court, asked that Ermelo revise its language policy
voluntarily due to the lack of space and resources in formerly black
schools in the area.</p><p>"It is so that white public schools were
hugely better resourced than black schools. They were lavishly treated
by the apartheid government. It is also true that they served and were
shored up by relatively affluent white communities. On the other hand,
formerly black public schools have been and by and large remain scantily
resourced,” Moseneke wrote.</p><p>“That is why perhaps the most abiding
and debilitating legacy of our past is an unequal distribution of
skills and competencies acquired through education."</p><p>Fochville’s
language policy extends beyond the classroom to administration, meaning
that the non-Afrikaans speaking parents of its students cannot be fully
active in their children’s education.</p><p>“The staff at the school
refused to speak to them in English and they can’t participate in the
meetings because they don’t understand the language,” says Nikki Stein,
an attorney from civil rights group Section 27. The group is
representing these parents in the pending court case as well as the
parents of children who were denied enrollment to Fochville High School.</p><p>The Fochville area
has two other schools the students could go to but these are already
considered to be over-burdened, with student to teacher ratio of about
45 to one. Fochville High School, according to Ms. Stein, has a
student-teacher ratio of about two-thirds of that, 29.8 to one.</p><p>The
students who cannot find places in Fochville or the over-flowing
township schools must take a bus 15 miles away to the next town, <a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/Carletonville" target="_self" class="">Carletonville</a>.</p><p>“Many of the learners are walking past the Fochville school to get to the bus to take them to Carletonville,” Stein says.</p>
<p>The
end result of Fochville’s language policy is that only 89 of its 841
students are black, about 10 percent. The figure is almost an inversion
of the municipal area where 86.5 percent of the population is black and
only 11.8 percent is white.</p><p>“We’ve challenged the language policy as it discriminates on the grounds of race,” Stein says.</p><p>Of those 89 black students, about half are being taught in Afrikaans, in line with the school’s language policy.</p>
<p>The
rest are part of an English-medium class that began in 2012 following
an order from the provincial department of education. However, after the
Supreme Court of Appeal ruled against the department in the Rivonia
Primary case, Fochville decided that it could also refuse to change its
admissions policy.</p><p>Fochville High and its opponents are now
awaiting the outcome of the Constitutional Court judgment on Rivonia
Primary before going forward. <br></p><p><a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Africa/2013/0618/Challenge-to-elite-South-African-schools-that-segregate-by-language">http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Africa/2013/0618/Challenge-to-elite-South-African-schools-that-segregate-by-language</a><br>
</p><p><br></p><br clear="all"><br>-- <br>**************************************<br>N.b.: Listing on the lgpolicy-list is merely intended as a service to its members<br>and implies neither approval, confirmation nor agreement by the owner or sponsor of the list as to the veracity of a message's contents. Members who disagree with a message are encouraged to post a rebuttal, and to write directly to the original sender of any offensive message. A copy of this may be forwarded to this list as well. (H. Schiffman, Moderator)<br>
<br>For more information about the lgpolicy-list, go to <a href="https://groups.sas.upenn.edu/mailman/">https://groups.sas.upenn.edu/mailman/</a><br>listinfo/lgpolicy-list<br>*******************************************
</div>