A legal battle regarding English-speaking learners at Swartruggens Gekombineerde Skool turned to court as the school said it does not have the infrastructure to deal with these learners.
Image: Social Media
An Afrikaans medium school in Mpumalanga turned to court to overturn a unilateral decision by the North West Department of Education to place 78 English-speaking learners in the school.
The Swartruggens Gekombineerde Skool, a single-medium Afrikaans school and its governing body told the North West High Court, sitting in Mafikeng, that it is not geared to educate English-speaking learners.
The placement occurred via the SA-SAMS system during the December 2025 holidays, without prior warning or agreement on the infrastructure of the school, its staffing capabilities, or its resources.
The school has an approved language policy, adopted in April last year, which designates Afrikaans as the sole language of instruction from Grade R to Grade 12. It also has an admission policy, which sets out capacity determinations based on educational, infrastructural, and operational factors.
The current learner population at the school is 366. Approximately 53% of the existing learner population consists of black learners, while the remaining 47% consists of white and coloured learners.
At the beginning of January last year, the department engaged the governing body regarding the possible integration of learners from the intermediate school. The circuit manager formally requested that the governing body introduce a dual-medium-of-instruction system to accommodate Grade 8 and 9 learners from the intermediate school.
The department undertook to provide support, including mobile classrooms, furniture, and additional educator posts. A series of meetings and correspondence followed over the next eleven months. The governing body consistently requested written commitments from the department regarding infrastructure, funding, human resources, and the instructional model (parallel versus dual medium).
A professional engineer, meanwhile, compiled a structural assessment report, which identified significant structural defects in the school’s buildings, which included that some structures are at risk of eventual collapse.
The department gave an undertaking that mobile classrooms would be erected, but before this was done, it had unilaterally placed 78 learners, specifically English-medium learners in Grades 8, 9, and 10 at the school.
During a meeting in January this year, the department stated that the purpose was to ensure the swift implementation of the decision to admit Grades 8 to 10. At this meeting, the SGB raised its concerns regarding structural defects, the lack of an electrical certificate of compliance, failures in sewerage and ablution facilities, and the absence of classrooms, ablutions, teacher consultations, and timeframes.
At the start of the first school term, the 78 learners, however, arrived at the school. They have since been accommodated in the wooden school hall identified by the engineer as being at risk of collapse.
An affidavit handed to court, meanwhile, records that the overwhelming majority of learners expressed a strong desire to remain at the school, that they feel settled and safe, and that they fear being sent back to the intermediate school, which they know to be in a state of disrepair. The school told the court that the matter is urgent because the unlawful placement has resulted in 78 learners being accommodated in an unsafe school hall.
Acting Judge A Wessels remarked that the right to a basic education is foundational to the country's constitutional order, and any threat to that right must be addressed without delay. “The balance of convenience favours granting interim relief, but not on the terms sought by the applicants. To remove the 78 learners forthwith would cause them considerable harm. To leave the situation entirely unaddressed would expose them to unacceptable safety risks,” the judge said.
The court concluded that the learners should remain at the school for now, but that the department must take immediate steps to address the school’s infrastructure, staffing, and resource needs.
The department has to report back to the court in this regard, and the matter will then be revisited at a later stage.
zelda.venter@inl.co.za