Over the past three weeks, Equal Education (EE) has been engaged in a debate with Premier Helen Zille over the need for minimum norms and standards for school infrastructure. Our opposing views can be summarised as follows.
Equal Education is in favour of norms and standards for school infrastructure. We believe that it is the best way to ensure that all schools have access to water, electricity, properly built classrooms and decent toilets. Over time norms and standards will do this by obliging provincial education departments to provide these services and resources and by empowering students and parents to hold them legally accountable for doing so.
Zille is not in favour of having norms and standards. She describes these as being "unachievable, unaffordable and educationally misdirected." Instead, Zille argues for school infrastructure "guidelines", and says that more effort and resources should rather be spent on improving the quality of teaching.
In one sense the debate between EE and Zille is academic, in that the Bhisho High Court has now ordered, and Minister Angie Motshekga has consented, that norms and standards for school infrastructure be adopted by 30 November 2013. So we will have norms and standards, this year.
However, the debate is still important because once norms and standards are adopted they will be applicable and enforceable across the country. Provincial education departments will have to ensure that their schools comply with the norms and standards, and students and parents will need to know what they are entitled to.
Zille bases her argument against norms and standards on a 2008 draft document, prepared by then Minister Naledi Pandor. This is despite the fact that Minister Motshekga has already published two drafts of her own, and a third is on the way. Zille's attachment to the 2008 draft can only be explained by its usefulness to her argument against any norms and standards.