The Eastern Cape education department has been sharply criticised in court papers, not just for its “delinquency” in underfunding public schools but also for the way it has conducted itself during litigation around the issue.
The Makhanda Circle of Unity and the school governing bodies of Ntsika Secondary, Tyantyi Primary and Hoërskool PJ Olivier, assisted by the Legal Resources Centre, will argue in the Makhanda High Court in March that it should declare as unlawful and set aside the department’s decision to underfund schools to the tune of billions of rand over five years.
It wants the court to order that they pay the minimum amount the minister has ruled should be paid per pupil.
But the LRC has struggled to get the department to respond to its litigation which acting department head Sharon Maasdorp has subsequently admitted carries “far-reaching” financial and other implications for the department.
LRC attorney Cecile van Schalkwyk sets out the department’s delinquency in the litigation.
The application was launched on October 25 2023. The department was required in terms of the rules of court to deliver the record of their impugned decisions by December of that year.
It finally did so in August, eight months late. In doing so, it defied a court order it agreed to deliver it timeously.
It proceeded to defy the same court order in terms of filing its answering affidavit on time.
While facing litigation about its 2023 decision to underfund schools it proceeded to make the identical decision for the coming 2024/2025 year.
When Maasdorp finally filed her answering affidavit — purportedly on behalf of four respondents, including the minister of basic education, no confirmatory affidavits were filed.
This meant everything she told the court on behalf of the minister was “inadmissible hearsay”.
The applicants will argue that the department had acted in an unacceptable manner reneging on its own undertakings and flagrantly disregarding orders of court to which it had agreed.
It had conducted itself ”without any apparent appreciation for the importance of the issues at stake in this application”.
It had shown “no sense of urgency in addressing their failure to provide minimally adequate funding to poor learners in the Eastern Cape”.
“The ECDOE has repeatedly shown itself, both in the determination of school allocations and their payment, and in its untenable defence in these proceedings, to be unwilling or incapable of taking decisions to protect the minimal hope of an adequate basic education for the province’s poorest learners.”
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