This news aggregator site highlights South African labour news from a wide range of internet and print sources. Each posting has a synopsis of the source article, together with a link or reference to the original. Postings cover the range of labour related matters from industrial relations to generalist human resources.
BL Premium reports that SA’s two biggest teachers’ unions have pushed back against the guidelines for implementing the Basic Education Laws Amendment (Bela) Act published by Department of Basic Education (DBE) Minister Siviwe Gwarube last week.
The guidelines, approved by the Council of Education Ministers, are intended to help provincial education departments bring the act’s provisions into effect. But the SA Democratic Teachers’ Union (Sadtu) and the National Professional Teachers’ Organisation of SA (Naptosa) say the act empowers the minister to craft regulations, not guidelines, which carry no legal weight and cannot be enforced. Gwarube told MPs on Tuesday that the guidelines would only be in place until regulations to the Act had been finalised. Draft regulations would be released for public comment by the end of June, she advised. A document detailing the guidelines indicates that they are intended to provide clarity on aspects of the Act, including some of its most controversial provisions dealing with schools’ language and admission policies. Sadtu urged its members who serve on school governing bodies to ignore the guidelines and called on the minister to retract them. Naptosa’s Lorvica Matthew said the fact that the guidelines were not legally binding ran the risk that provinces would implement them inconsistently. This risk was particularly acute for the sections dealing with language and admission policies, and the powers of school governing bodies, she argued.
- Read the full original of the report in the above regard by Tamar Kahn at BusinessLive (subscriber access only)
Get other news reports at the SA Labour News home page