The Western Cape High Court has ordered the Western Cape Education Department (WCED) to place pupils in schools within ten days.
This includes all out-of-school pupils in the Metro East District.
The district includes areas such as Khayelitsha, Kuils River, Eerste River and Somerset West.
The ruling comes after Equal Education and the Equal Education Law Centre had dragged the department to court for the urgent placement of learners who remained out of school.
Equal Education’s Head of Organising, Nontsikelelo Dlulani, says there’s a crisis around school admission in the province.
Dlulani added that this court order is a form of victory for them.
“ The court order really agreed with everything that Equal Education, the Equal Education Law Centre and the five parents who are part of the court application were asking for. The most important thing that we asked was that all learners must be placed in schools and that no learner should be left behind in the process of getting their constitutional right on basic to education”.
Meanwhile, the WCED’s Kerry Mauchline says this matter could have been resolved through engagement with the department.
“Most of the names of the learners named in the Equal Education’s initial application were placed or were in the process of being placed at the time of the application when Equal Education added additional names via their court papers. We moved speedily to resolve the new cases. We remain committed to providing quality education to all learners and we are working hard to build more schools faster than ever before”.
Picture: Equal Education (Facebook)
