South Africa: Department of Education enters school language fray

[Harold Schiffman]

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Department enters school language fray
By Hanti Otto

The Pretoria High Court last week granted the Department of Education
leave to intervene as a third respondent in a school language battle.
The Tabok Derdepoort parent committee earlier filed an application
against the FH Odendaal High School and the school's governing body,
wanting the court to rule that the school's parallel medium status be
set aside and that the vacancies in the governing body (SGB) be filled
within 14 days. They want the school to again be a single medium
Afrikaans school. In January 2007, the SGB decided to change the
school's language policy to accommodate English-speaking pupils. The
Tabok parent committee claim that fewer pupils are enrolling at the
school and there are eight empty classrooms. They also say many
teachers left after the school was made a parallel medium institution.

Eben Boshoff, director: legal services and legislation at the
Department of Education, submitted a notice of motion, requesting that
the department be allowed to intervene as the third respondent. "It
goes without saying that the setting aside of the new language policy
(at FH Odendaal) will affect the admission of learners into the school
in 2008 and may result in some of the public schools within the
circuit being overcrowded... it may not be in the interest of learners
to keep the school as a single medium Afrikaans school," Boshoff
argued. Johannes Francois Malan, principal of the school, also opposed
the parent committee's application, saying it had no right to bring
such an application, as the determination of the language policy of
the school exclusively fell within the domain of the SGB.

There were also no vacancies within the SGB, he said. Malan said the
school had been a single Afrikaans medium school for many years. In
2004 they realised that the numbers of learners were declining. The
SGB had to take measures to attract more learners.
Twice in October 2006 they debated the language policy and the change
was implemented in January this year. In March, Malan issued a
circular to the parents, again explaining the reasons for the change.




This article was originally published on page 3 of The Pretoria News
on December 24, 2007
 http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=105&art_id=vn20071224080751244C611712



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