After years of campaigning and mobilising by Equal Education members, the Minister of Basic Education Angie Motshekga promulgated Regulations Relating to Minimum Uniform Norms and Standards for Public School Infrastructure on 29 November 2013. This school infrastrcture law sets out the obligations on the State to fix the crisis in South Africa’s school infrastructure.
In 2014 EE and the EE Law Centre raised a number of concerns with the Department of Basic Education (DBE), relating to the vague and open ended wording of the Norms and Standards. The Minister asked for time to work on implementation, and undertook to respond to our concerns during January of 2015. As of October 2015, no response had been received, and the provincial plans for implementing the regulations reflected the same worrying vagueness and uncertainty as the law itself.
During August 2015 the EELC assisted EE in analysing the implementation plans, and addressing letters to all Provincial Education MECs about the inadequacies in the plans.
The EELC represented EE in the Bhisho High Court in March 2018, challenging the loopholes in the Norms law, and in seeking an order from the Court that the Minister must take certain minimum steps to oversee and monitor implementation of a binding set of standards for school infrastructure.
Victory! In July 2018 the Bhisho High Court ruled entirely in EE’s favour in the #FixTheNorms case!
While Minister Motshekga and the nine Education MECs then filed an appeal against the judgment with the Constitutional Court, the Constitutional Court refused to entertain the appeal!
