Staff Reporter
The Department of Basic Education and the Portfolio Committee on Basic Education is set to deliberate the consolidated National Basic Education Laws Amendment (BELA) Bill report post public engagements and the submission of comments by 8 August 2023.
A clause-by-clause engagement will take place today 15 August, until 18 August, analysing the public hearings and the oral and written submissions to rephrase, reject or take forward all 56 clauses contained in the Bill.
This is an opportunity for the DBE to respond to comments and concerns raised during the hearings, whether in support of the Bill or not. Parliament will then decide whether further amendments are required to the current version of the BELA Bill. Following this process, the Bill will be presented to Parliament before it is signed into law by the President.
The Committee, accompanied by DBE officials, concluded Public Hearings across all nine provinces earlier this year. Public hearings commenced in the Limpopo Province on 24 February and finished in the Eastern Cape Province on 11 June 2023. This week, the Committee finalised and approved the provincial reports, ending with the Eastern and the Northern Cape public hearings.
The public hearings were necessary to enhance public involvement to impact positively the mandate of participatory democracy to inform, consult, involve and provide feedback to South Africans on the way forward in respect of the Bill. During the hearings, we provided information in Braille, and sign language interpreters assisted in an inclusive engagement to leave no one behind during the consultative process.
The Committee remains cognisant of the importance of public consultation in law-making, and we wanted to secure the integrity of this process. In addition, there has been a significant interest in the amendments as stakeholders and individuals are interested in ensuring a functional educational system for the children of this country; thus, all plans had to be in place to cater for this interest. The Committee is now satisfied that Parliament’s internal units have addressed all the operational risks.
The Committee received oral submissions from 31 organisations from 8 – 29 November 2022. Some organisations support the Bill; some contest the Bill, and those feel that specific clauses need to be amended or removed.
The BELA Bill proposes to amend the South African Schools Act (SASA) of 1996 and the Employment of Educators Act (EEA) of 1998 to align them with developments in the education landscape and to ensure that systems of learning are put in place in a manner that gives effect to the right to primary education enshrined in section 29(1) of the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1996.
INSIDE EDUCATION
