Realising the Right to Basic Education: The Role of the Courts and Civil Society

Product Details:
Author(s):
Veriava, F
Year Published:
2019
Edition
1st Edition
Type:
Print | Soft Cover
Language:
English
About this publication
Realising the Right to Basic Education examines the crucial roles of civil society and the courts in developing the right to education in South Africa amid substantial and persistent inequalities in education provisioning. 
Unlike other socio-economic rights in the Constitution, the right to basic education is framed as an unqualified right – it is not subject to qualifiers such as ‘progressive realisation’ and ‘within the state’s available resources’. Yet, two and a half decades into South Africa’s constitutional democracy, the apartheid legacy of unequal education still lingers. Poor, predominantly black learners continue to attend historically disadvantaged schools that are often severely under-resourced, producing poor learner outcomes. This has given rise to a wave of civil society activism since around 2008 – and organisations have been utilising legal mobilisation as a key tool to effect change in historically disadvantaged schools. The litigation initiated by these organisations has contributed to a rich and evolving jurisprudence on the right to basic education as a substantive right. However, in a significant number of these cases, the relevant education departments have not complied with court orders, requiring litigants to seek increasingly innovative, experimentalist and even coercive remedies to ensure that judgments are implemented. 
Realising the Right to Basic Education presents an overview of these education-provisioning cases and the roles played by civil society and the courts. It analyses the contribution of these two role-players in the normative development of the right to basic education. The book also aims to identify a viable framework for interpreting the right to basic education – one that can guide South Africa towards adequate education provisioning and, ultimately, facilitate transformation of basic education in South Africa’s historically disadvantaged schools.
Content
Chapter 1: Introduction
Chapter 2: An ailing and failing system of basic education: a review of government responses to the ‘crisis’ in South Africa’s public schools
Chapter 3: A ‘transformative constitutionalist narrative’ for the right to basic education 
Chapter 4: The contribution of the courts to the transformative constitutionalist narrative for the right to basic education 
Chapter 5: The contribution of civil society to the transformative constitutionalist narrative for the right to basic education
Chapter 6: The right to education in the United States, India and Brazil
Chapter 7: Conclusion: towards a transformative constitutionalist narrative for the right to basic education
Index 
Interest / Benefit to
Human rights advocates
NGOs
Public and private schools
Educators
Principals