Helen Zille says Angie Motshekga “painted herself into a corner” regarding the infrastructure norms and standards for schools.
|||Cape Town - DA leader Helen Zille says she cannot understand why Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga allowed herself to be “frog-marched” into a commitment to publish infrastructure norms and standards for schools by the middle of this year.
In her SA Today newsletter on Monday, Zille said she presumed that Motshekga and her advisers were worried about being painted as opponents of infrastructure improvement.
“But, in reality, she only succeeded in painting herself into a corner.”
Last month, following an agreement between the Department of Basic Education and advocacy group Equal Education, the Bhisho High Court granted an order compelling Motshekga to publish norms and standards for school infrastructure. Equal Education said the norms and standards would set the basic level of infrastructure every school had to meet in order to function properly.
This would include toilets, running water, electricity, libraries, safe classrooms, sports fields and perimeter security.
Zille, who has been backing Motshekga in the debate around the norms and standards, said that instead of engaging her (Zille’s) arguments, commentators and activists had concluded that her “primary agenda is not education but driving a wedge between the ANC and the trade unions”.
She said Motshekga had sensibly acknowledged that state-of-the-art infrastructure norms and standards were “unachievable, unaffordable and educationally misdirected in our context”.
Zille said the South African Schools Act did not oblige Motshekga to impose norms and standards for infrastructure, but stated that she could do so.
“But once she embarks down this road there is no room for latitude. Then the act prescribes that norms and standards must cover almost everything from classroom size to extra-curricular choices.”
She said draft guidelines by Motshekga sought to address inadequate infrastructure by “enabling innovation and partnership”.
Motshekga’s spokeswoman, Hope Mokgatlhe, said the minister would not comment on the newsletter.
Cape Argus