School teacher's desk. Picture: THE TIMES
Picture: THE TIMES

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THE Western Cape provincial government has denied allegations by the South African Democratic Teachers' Union (Sadtu) that it wants to privatise public schools in poor areas, which Sadtu says will lead to teachers losing their jobs.

The union, together with the South African Communist Party (SACP) in the Western Cape and Congress of South African Students, on Thursday picketed outside the Western Cape education department, calling for the scrapping of the collaborative schools pilot project.

The department has created a new schooling model, dubbed collaboration schools, where donors, including private foundations, play a major role in the day-to-day running of the school.

The department said support organisations, called operating partners, would ensure intensive school-level support to teachers and principals through training, additional resources, monitoring and regular feedback.

The pilot project is being rolled out from this year for a trial period of five years, and will be implemented with the full agreement of governing bodies in participating schools. Five schools have been selected to take part in the pilot project.

But the SACP and Sadtu said on Thursday that "the schools collaboration project finds its expression in the context of privatising what belongs to the public and will ultimately commodify what the public (is) supposed to get free".

"We are not against the sourcing of donors for the improvement of our public schools; however, this should not be done to restructure the democratic structure of governance currently outlined in the South African Schools Act.

"(We) condemn the idea of commodifying our education system by annexing public schools and delivering them into the hands of profit-driven consortiums. The privatisation of our education system has been presented as collaboration between the provincial government, the community and private consortiums," the organisations said.

"This ploy by the (provincial education department) is nothing more than the implementation of neoliberal policy, the policy that will ignore and censor the community, parents, teachers and workers say in the governance of the school," the SACP and Sadtu said in a memorandum submitted to the provincial education department.

Western Cape education department spokeswoman Bronagh Casey said that the project did not involve the privatising of schools.

"A collaboration school is a new type of no-fee public school, partnered with an experienced nonprofit school support organisation called an ‘operating partner’, with the education department overseeing school performance and holding the school and operating partner to account as part of the public education system," said Ms Casey.

She said teachers in schools that choose to become collaboration schools would continue to be employed and paid by the department under their original contract in terms of the Employment of Educators Act.

"The pilot is designed to create an environment with an improved educational experience for learners... In other words, these schools will be provided with a range of additional resources, which they otherwise would not necessarily receive — all to the benefit of the learner and improving the quality of education at the school," said Ms Casey.