Equal Education wins school infrastructure battle

Equal Education won its #FixOurSchools case against Motshekga on Thursday. 

The Bhisho High Court in the Eastern Cape found several provisions of regulations relating to the quality and upgrading of school infrastructure to be unconstitutional.

The Minimum Norms and Standards for School Infrastructure legislation sets out timelines on the upgrading of specific infrastructure at schools.

The court found a provision, which allows Motshekga to delay the upgrading if entities such as Eskom or the Water and Sanitation Department are unable to provide the service, to be unconstitutional. 

“The order strikes out the clause that the norms and standards only have to comply with if other entities and organs of state provide resources and corporation,” explains deputy director at Equal Education Law Centre, Daniel Linde.

Linde explains some of the deadlines have already been missed.

The department had to replace schools made of “inappropriate structures” by November 2016 but this didn’t happen.

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“Immediately we can say that the state must have provided basic infrastructure to school by the end of 2016 and is in default of doing so, and so has to account for doing so urgently.”

In March, Motshekga blamed infrastructure backlogs at public schools on a lack of adequate funding and capacity.

"We work with a lot of service providers, including the Department of Public Works, the backlog is huge and our budget on infrastructure is R7 billion annually and it's not adequate and sometimes there is no capacity in the country to deal with our challenges," Motshekga told the media.

The department says it has taken note of the judgment and that it comes at a time when it was in the process of finalising amendments to the regulations.