<div dir="ltr"><h1 class="gmail-title">Schools take Education MEC to court</h1>
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<span id="gmail-lblByLine" class="gmail-byline">Ndileka Lujabe</span>
<span id="gmail-lblTimestamp" class="gmail-timestamp">2017-01-11 17:20</span>
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Gauteng MEC for Education Panyaza Lesufi. Picture: Cornel van Heerden
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<p>Two Afrikaans high schools in Pretoria have applied to interdict
Gauteng Education MEC Panyaza Lesufi from changing their language
policies.</p><p>Hoërskool Montana and Hoërskool Overkruin have resisted
the Gauteng Department Education’s request to take in more
English-speaking pupils.</p><p>The schools saw this instruction as Lesufi interfering with their language and admission policies.</p><p>Both
schools, predominantly Afrikaans, say the matter is not necessarily
about language policy but a question of capacity as they have limited
space to accommodate English-speaking learners.</p><p>The department says it approached the schools in December 2016 with the request to accommodate more pupils.</p><p>Last
year the Constitutional Court ruled in favour of the Education
Department over language policies, saying admissions shouldn’t be
racially based.</p><p>At the time, the department was <a href="http://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/Lesufi-Afrikaans-schools-use-language-to-create-enclaves-20150527" target="_blank">in court</a>
following an urgent application by the Federation of Governing Bodies
of South African Schools, which said it was preventing the department
from interfering with School Governing Body preserves of language and
admission policies.</p><p>The court <a href="http://ewn.co.za/2015/05/27/Education-MEC-prepared-to-appeal-SGB-language-ruling" target="_blank">ruled </a>that
schools had the right to prepare and submit waiting lists, and that
such lists may be informed by the schools’ internal admission and
language policies.</p><p>The department maintains that both schools knew
about recommendations to accommodate more pupils since July last year,
and did nothing about it until now.</p><p><a href="http://city-press.news24.com/News/schools-take-education-mec-to-court-20170111">http://city-press.news24.com/News/schools-take-education-mec-to-court-20170111</a><br></p><br clear="all"><br>-- <br><div class="gmail_signature">**************************************<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/" target="_blank">https://groups.sas.upenn.edu/mailman/</a><br>listinfo/lgpolicy-list<br>*******************************************</div>
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