GALOOME SHOPANE- Two Free State school governing bodies must review their current pregnancy policies, the Constitutional Court ruled on Wednesday.
The review has to be done by October 10th this year, Judge SisiKhampepe said in the judgment. Once the review was complete, the Harmony and Welkom High Schools’ governing bodies had to hand over an affidavit to the court setting out the process followed and furnish copies of the reviewed policies.
The court was delivering judgment in a dispute between the Free State education and two Welkom schools.
The Centre for Child Law has welcomed the ruling and says it is “pleased” with the outcome.
Attorney Morgan Courtenay who is with the centresays ” this is the step in the right direction.”
“Pregnancy policies are not confined to these two schools,” says Courtenay. He further explains that this is a trend “that refuses children their basic right to education.”
Courtenay says “the policies violated a number of rights of the children.” He says as the Centre for Child Law they had “noted an ever increasing amount of children who were being excluded from the system because of these types of pregnancy policies.”
He says “the judgement does not take any power from SGB’s, but provides them with guidance for making school policies that are not exclusionary, but factor in all circumstances regarding the children.”
In 2008 and 2009, the governing bodies adopted policies that provide for the automatic exclusion of pregnant pupils from school.
