<div dir="ltr"><h1 class="gmail-title">English-speaking Hoërskool Overvaal applicants will know their fate next week</h1>
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<span id="gmail-lblByLine" class="gmail-byline">Staff Reporter</span>
<span id="gmail-lblTimestamp" class="gmail-timestamp">2018-01-12 17:37</span>
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<p>A school in Vereeniging has been blasted in court by the Gauteng
department of education, which claims that the school had refused to
admit 55 students because of its language policy, not because of space.</p><p><a href="https://www.timeslive.co.za/news/south-africa/2018-01-12-horskool-overvaal-blind-to-transformation-demographics-court-hears/">The Times reported</a>
this afternoon that Kumbirai Toma‚ the department’s lawyer‚ said the
Hoërskool Overvaal school governing body had made it clear in one of
several meetings on the issue that “the school was an Afrikaans school
and that this will never change”.</p><p>The publication quoted Toma as
saying that the governing body had no problem admitting more Afrikaans
pupils but raised the issue of capacity and space when it was instructed
to admit the 55 English-speaking pupils.</p><p>Judge Bill Prinsloo asked Toma whether this was not the function of single-medium schools.</p><p>Toma
replied that the department’s objection was not on the existence of
single-medium schools but on the need to respond to the demographics and
changing dynamics of society.</p><p>Hoërskool Overvaal celebrated a
small victory on Thursday when the North Gauteng High Court found that
the school’s application to seek an order against the Gauteng education
department’s decision to admit an additional 55 learners, was an urgent
matter. </p><p>“We have this urgent application and everyone, in
particular the poor children and the authorities, want a result,” said
Judge Bill Prinsloo.</p><p>Prinsloo had found that the department failed to convince the court that the application lacked urgency. </p><p>The
school’s governing body brought an urgent application before the court
on Tuesday in a bid to overturn the decision to admit the 55 learners. </p><p>Hoërskool
Overvaal, whose medium of instruction is Afrikaans, argued that
instructions from the Gauteng department of education did not negate its
own language policy. </p><p>Advocate Albert Lamey, for the school, told
the court that enforcing directives that go against the school’s
language policy was in contradiction of the Schools Act. </p><p>“You
cannot expect the school, against its language policy, to admit English
learners to a school whose medium is Afrikaans,” Lamey told the court.</p><p>He
added that the department of education could not negate a
single-language policy from a school that was growing in number of
people wanting to learn in that language, including learners “of all
colours”. </p><p>Lamey also argued that the school was at its capacity
and that the department tried to admit the English pupils before it had
determined the available space in the high school.</p><p>In the school’s
replying affidavit, it said allegations of racial discrimination and
the use of language to segregate were devoid of all truth.</p><p>“The
department is also fully aware that the school has a number of black
learners whose choice of language for education has been to be in
Afrikaans, who have been admitted in the past and have also been
admitted for purposes of 2018.”</p><p>In the department’s answering
affidavit, it argued that the school was not full and that students were
denied places based on their language preference. </p><p>Affected
parents and pupils who were in court on Thursday claimed they had to
pass the school every day in order to take their children to schools
much further away, because their children had been excluded on what they
claimed were racial grounds. </p><p>“It’s unfortunate that from where
we are observing it, it’s nothing but a racial issue, there is high
racism that is taking place in that area and we believe that they are
doing so to deny our children access [to] that school,” said parent
Thloriso Mofokeng. </p>Judgment is expected next week. – <em>Additional reporting by News24 </em><br clear="all"><br>-- <br><div class="gmail_signature">=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+<br><br> Harold F. Schiffman<br><br>Professor Emeritus of <br> Dravidian Linguistics and Culture <br>Dept. of South Asia Studies <br>University of Pennsylvania<br>Philadelphia, PA 19104-6305<br><br>Phone: (215) 898-7475<br>Fax: (215) 573-2138 <br><br>Email: <a href="mailto:haroldfs@gmail.com" target="_blank">haroldfs@gmail.com</a><br><a href="http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/" target="_blank">http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/</a> <br><br>-------------------------------------------------</div>
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