This study argues that education law is of paramount importance in order to be a successful
teacher in our democracy where human rights of all stakeholders are protected and as such
remains the responsibility of government to ensure that all new teachers are trained in the
field of education law.
This dissertation reports to the significance the participants attach to education law and to
their attitudes and their practice in schools. It continues to answer the question whether
knowing the legal rules is in fact changing the game on ground level. There are differing
perspectives on the exact essence of education law; however, there seems to be consensus
in the literature that the fundamental function of education law is to regulate the rights
and obligations of the interested parties in order to make the school conducive for teaching
and learning. The education law functionally contributes to the creation of harmonizing
relationships and ensuring co-operation amongst all stakeholders. Education law therefore
creates a clear framework for the professional role of teachers. The law defines the border
of the playfield and actions at stake in the education sector. Education law as module in Higher Education programmes deals with issues that pertain
directly to the teaching profession. These include inter alia governance, the Bill of Rights,
instructions/regulations, limitations, application of legal principles and expectations
regarding the teacher as an employee. It deals with legal applications and the legal
balancing of human rights in educational practice. As a result, it is assumed that teachers
may feel somewhat overwhelmed by the content of an education law module and its
associated outcomes. This dissertation will therefore also deal with the ability of teachers
to understand and apply the values that underpin the Constitution of the Republic of South
Africa. Education should lead young citizens towards occupying their place in a democratic
society based on human dignity, equality and freedom. The dissertation argues that
insufficient knowledge of education law is impacting negatively on a culture of human
rights application in our school system which results that the school system is unsuccessful
and do not fulfil its obligations in a democracy. This may result in the DoBE being held accountable for not empowering teachers to develop our young citizens to fulfil their place
in our democracy.
In light of the impact of education law, this dissertation is essentially divided into three
sections:
The first section provides an overview of the issues and challenges of teachers
who have had no formal exposure to education law;
The second section focuses on the impact on teachers who have studied
education law as part of their teaching qualification, and
The third section seeks to offer policy recommendations as remedy, inter alia to
include education law as part of all teachers’ training curricula in South Africa.
The legal remedies that this dissertation advocates is that Government should take on their
legal responsibilities towards its employees without turning a blind eye on the value crisis
in our country. Government is accountable to ensure that each teacher is skilled and have
the competencies to apply legal principles and human rights to instil a culture of human
rights that is conducive for teaching in our school system. / Dissertation (MEd)--University of Pretoria, 2014. / lk2014 / Education Management and Policy Studies / MEd / unrestricted
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:up/oai:repository.up.ac.za:2263/43224 |
| Date | January 2014 |
| Creators | Pillay, Neelan |
| Contributors | Van Vollenhoven, Willem Johannes, gabphill@telkomsa.net |
| Publisher | University of Pretoria |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Dissertation |
| Rights | © 2014 University of Pretoria. All rights reserved. The copyright in this work vests in the University of Pretoria. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the University of Pretoria. |
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