Equal Education has become a force to be reckoned with as it campaigns to improve schooling for all pupils in SA.
|||Cape Town - Five hundred broken windows at a Khayelitsha school and conversations between a handful of old friends, political activists and academics, about the problems in education.
These were what led to the formation of organisation Equal Education, which has become a force to be reckoned with as it campaigns to improve schooling for all pupils in South Africa.
The organisation started out about five and a half years ago as the Applied Education Research Organisation (Aero). It began with the intention of researching what the problems were in education before it would start the work which would bring about systemic change in the education system, as the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) had done for health.
But far more quickly than planned, it moved into organising campaigns which led to real change in children’s lives.
Chairwoman Yoliswa Dwane, 31, who started working with the organisation in 2008 soon after completing her media and law degree from UCT, said: “We acknowledged no one knows how to change education systems, but we could learn from TAC’s mistakes and campaigns.”
As it forced change in schools, Equal Education attracted attention, with authorities sitting up and taking notice. Educationist Graeme Bloch recently accompanied Equal Education on a tour of dilapidated Eastern Cape schools. “I think that they are brilliant. I think that they have a youth base is brilliant.”
He said the organisation’s one shortcoming was that it was Cape Town-based and needed to do more to spread across the country. “Their real success is to put the issue of norms and standards and libraries on the agenda.”
In 2008, Dwane was recruited with Doron Isaacs, another UCT graduate, who continued to work with the organisation as its deputy general secretary.
Some of the big names involved with Equal Education’s beginnings included Zackie Achmat, who had founded the TAC, Crain Soudien, who was deputy vice-chancellor at UCT in charge of transformation and social responsiveness, Mary Metcalfe, who had been Education MEC in Gauteng and director-general of the Department of Higher Education and Training, and Paula Ensor, who was dean of humanities at UCT.
“Zackie also had a lot of experience with post-apartheid activism work. He built, with others, the TAC, which after six years… grew into a big organisation which was able to win big cases. Some of them had deep-down knowledge of the education system,” she said, speaking to the Cape Times at Equal Education’s offices in Khayelitsha.
Dwane said it was decided that an organisation needed to be built which would understand the issues in education and campaign using political action to bring about change.
They got to work in the TAC’s offices in Cape Town, with Dwane in charge of collating news stories about education. “No one was really holding the government to account. Academics and researchers were writing about it but weren’t being forceful about it.”
What followed was a whirlwind of admin work – registering the organisation, speaking to donors, getting permission to go into schools and starting a magazine called Equal Education. “For the first few months we were sitting in schools, observing what was going on. We still wanted to learn more, so we invited people from different universities to come and speak to us.”
UCT School of Education’s Pam Christie said at the seminars: “It’s not radical enough. It’s no different. You need to take a radical step now.”
Dwane said: “Immediately afterwards, we decided we were going to be Equal Education. And we had to fast-track our programme of action.” At a meeting in Khayelitsha, pupils were given disposable cameras and asked to photograph the problems at their schools. One, Zukiswa Vuka, came back with a photo which showed more than 500 broken windows at Luhlaza Secondary School.
“We decided that the Luhlaza campaign was the one we were going to take up. We have not run a campaign by ourselves before, so we just ran that campaign. We went to the principals, the teachers.” Equal Education asked Education MEC Yusuf Gabru for R7 000 to put towards fixing the windows. He gave them R671 000.
Dwane said of Equal Education’s first campaign and first year: “It was a good campaign because it showed that ordinary people would make a difference. When you win a campaign, you build power. The morale of the people went up and we were able to build more power.”
Equal Education then ran a number of other, equally successful, projects against late-coming and mud schools, and calling for each school to have a library, among others.
About three years ago, Equal Education began a campaign which called for the Department of Basic Education to publish minimum norms and standards for school infrastructure, which could be used to hold the department accountable for inadequate schools. These were yet to be finalised.
Dwane said Equal Education’s success was due to its being run by young people whom its members could look up to. “If we have a poster, we will easily pull 3 000 people. Apart from our core members, we have thousands of supporters in Khayelitsha.”
Equal Education currently had about 40 staff members. It had established relationships with a number of large, international companies which funded its work.
Next up for Equal Education was a look at teacher training and development, Dwane said.
Milestones:
* Broken windows at Luhlaza High in Khayelitsha were repaired.
* Campaign for school libraries.
* The Bookery, a depot where books were donated and sorted before being taken to schools. More than 20 school libraries had been opened.
* Lodged a complaint with the ASA against a radio advertisement promoting Smart Kids Brain Boost, which claimed to help children get to the top of their class.
* Campaign for minimum norms and standards for school infrastructure.
* Involved in protests against the closure of 27 Western Cape schools last year.
* Harmony High Court case, which is to determine whether school governing bodies can suspend pregnant pupils.
* Moshesh Senior Secondary court case about poor learning conditions at the school. The case is to be heard in the Bhisho High Court on June 18.
* Publishes research about education being essential but not an essential service.
* Rivonia Primary court case about who had the power to decide on how many pupils a school should admit.
* Taking Free State Education Department and Leseding Technical High to court for dragging a pupil who had dreadlocks out of class. The high court ordered that the pupil be allowed back in class.
michelle.jones@inl.co.za
Cape Times