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TimesLIVE reports that dozens of KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) school principals have secured an interdict to stop the provincial education department from taking disciplinary action against them.
They say that allegations that they somehow committed fraud in compiling their head counts for learners with disabilities are baseless. While not using the word, the principals strongly suggest that they are being subjected to a “witch hunt”. They are preparing court papers to review and set aside the decision by the director-general to subject them to disciplinary hearings. On 10 November, Pietermaritzburg High Court Judge Mokgere Masipa granted an interim interdict at the principals’ behest, staying the hearings pending the finalisation of the review application.
Many of these schools and the National Professional Teachers’ Organisation of SA (Naptosa) were involved in related litigation against the department a year ago. This after the department, in an 11th-hour circular sent out at the end of November, indicated it would in 2025 no longer provide the usual teacher salary funding relating to Learners with Special Needs. In other words, it had excluded these pupils from the head count it used in its funding formula. In the latest application before Masipa, the principals and governing bodies noted that the department had failed to file any opposing affidavits in these matters, in spite of court-imposed deadlines. Laddsworth SGB chair Caryn Porritt said that to suggest that principals had acted fraudulently was “defamatory and uncalled for in the extreme”, and the decision to subject them to disciplinary hearings was “arbitrary and capricious”.
- Read the full original of the report in the above regard by Tania Broughton at TimesLIVE (subscriber access only)
Get other news reports at the SA LabourNews home page