It has emerged that the Amazing K School for Autistic Children in Northwold, which was recently embroiled in a debacle with residents due to rezoning issues, is not registered with the Gauteng Department of Education (GDE).
According to the department, there is a formal process of application to establish a registered independent school offering a specialised curriculum, which the school should have followed before operating.
The school recently came under the spotlight when some residents in the suburb objected to the rezoning application to accommodate more children. This week, the GDE revealed that the school was not listed in its records. “An independent autism school would need to comply with all the legislative requirements for registering,” said the department’s spokesperson, Oupa Bodibe.
He explained that the school would need to offer an autism-specific curriculum which deals with pupils’ individual needs. “The learning approach and techniques would need to respond to the individual learner’s needs while staying within the national curriculum framework,” he said.
The department indicated that there was a formal process of application to establish a registered independent school offering a specialised curriculum. “It is suggested that the school first begins to operate within the legal parameters as a registered independent school, offering a special curriculum. The department cannot endorse the expansion of an illegally-operating school,” he concluded.
The Pestalozzi Trust is an organisation that works with homeschoolers and cottage schools to protect their freedom to provide home and private education. This in a bid to ensure that parents can educate their children lawfully and without unjustified interference.
Speaking on behalf of the school, Leendert van Oostrum from the trust, said the school had attempted, over a period of several years, to follow the rapidly changing legal procedures for opening a school, but to no avail. “The issue at hand is whether the law protects the operation of unregistered schools under circumstances where the State itself sabotages the registration process,” he said.
“The issue at hand is whether the law protects the operation of unregistered schools under circumstances where the State itself sabotages the registration process,” he said.
Van Oostrum said the government’s response to these charges was the standard one of puffed-up politicians and petty bureaucrats avoiding accountability for their actions. “It is perfectly clear that parents are capable of doing quality control for the education of their children.
“The parents have concluded that the education provided by the education department is not what their children need. Parents are already doing quality control of the education of their children. Quality control measures by the GDE are, therefore, superfluous and almost certainly deleterious to a good education,” he concluded.
Sandra Usswald, national director of Autism South Africa said they were saddened by the conflict that the expansion of Amazing K has caused, and hopes all parties will be able to come to an agreement for the benefit of the children affected.
The GDE had, however, visited the school on 6 September after the last correspondence with the Randburg Sun.
The school owner Ilse Killian-Ross said the inspector from the Department promised to fast-track their registration and ensure that the school was registered.
“Mr Twala was very helpful and we had a wonderful conversation. I showed him correspondence dating back to mid-2013 where I have on numerous occasions asked both Independent Schools Association of Southern Africa (ISASA) and the Department of Education to help me register Amazing K as a school with the GDE,” she said.
GDE is yet to respond to the questions about the registration process and why it took this long for them to address this plight.
Details: Gauteng Department of Education 011 355 0000; Pestalozzi Trust 012 330 1337.
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