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The Department of Education is facing another court challenge for not adhering to an earlier court order.
The Grahamstown-based Legal Resources Centre says it has filed a second urgent application in the Mthatha High Court on behalf of the Centre for Child Law and four Eastern Cape schools.
This relates to the failure of the National and Provincial Departments of Education to conduct a credible audit of furniture needs at all schools in the province, and to supply the required furniture.
The LRC says this move has been necessitated by the Eastern Cape Department Of Education's failure to comply with the court order granted in the wake of an agreement between the parties last November.
It's now seeking an order that will declare the two Departments to be in breach of the November 2012 court order.
Ann Skelton, the director of the Centre for Child Law decried the DBE’s non-compliance and described it as a violation of the leaners’ rights.
“The respondents (DBE) have not only failed to produce a legitimate audit recording the furniture needs of all public schools in the Eastern Cape, but they have failed to deliver the furniture needed by those schools that were recorded on the audit."
“I submit that with each passing day that the learners are required to be at school without adequate furniture, the urgency increases. The absence of furniture in schools is an ongoing violation of learners’ right to basic education,” says Skelton.
