The DBE and the Portfolio Committee on Basic Education are set to deliberate the consolidated national Basic Education Laws Amendment (BELA) Bill report post public engagements and the submission of comments on 8 August 2023. A clause by clause engagement will be taking place during 15 to 18 August 2023, for analysis of the public hearings, as well as the oral and written submissions to rephrase, reject or take forward all 56 clauses contained in the Bill. This is an opportunity for the DBE to respond to comments and concerns that have been raised during the hearings, whether in support of the Bill or not. Parliament will then decide whether further amendments are required to the current version of the BELA Bill. Following this process, the Bill will be presented to Parliament before it is signed into law by the President.

The Committee, accompanied by DBE officials, concluded Public Hearings across all nine provinces earlier this year. Public hearings commenced in the Limpopo Province on 24 February and concluded in the Eastern Cape Province on 11 June 2023. This week, the Committee finalised and approved the provincial reports, concluding with the Eastern and the Northern Cape public hearings.

The public hearings were necessary to enhance public involvement to impact positively to the mandate of participatory democracy to inform, consult, involve and provide feedback to South Africans on the way forward in respect of the Bill. During the hearings, we provided information in Braille, and sign language interpreters assisted for an inclusive engagement to leave no one behind during the consultative process. The Committee remains cognisant of the importance of public consultation in law-making and we wanted to secure the integrity of this process. In addition, there has been major interest in the amendments as stakeholders and individuals are interested in ensuring a functional educational system for the children of this country, thus all systems had to be in place to cater for this interest. The Committee is now satisfied that all the operational risks have been addressed by Parliament’s internal units.

The Committee received oral submissions from 31 organisations from 8 – 29 November 2022. There are organisations that support the Bill; those who contest the Bill; and those who feel that certain clauses need to be amended or removed. The BELA Bill proposes to amend the South African Schools Act (SASA) of 1996 and the Employment of Educators Act (EEA) of 1998, to align them with developments in the education landscape and to ensure that systems of learning are put in place in a manner that gives effect to the right to basic education enshrined in section 29(1) of the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1996.