Education lobby groups call on government to be more proactive

Education lobby groups are calling on government to do better with actively involving citizens in decisions about schools and education.

The Basic Education Department has proposed two draft regulations for school admissions and classroom sizes.

The department recently extended the deadline for public comment to 5 December.

But Equal Education and the Equal Education Law Centre said the proposed new laws must be made available in all official languages and better public awareness campaigns are needed.

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Senior researcher at the Equal Education Law Centre, Katherine Sutherland, said regulations cannot solve real problems without proper community input.

"We see that there is a lot of room for more equitable use of the existing resources we already have, so how can we take the minimum resources that we have and make them useful and work for the majority of learners and not just the few, and that’s something that the admissions regulations are trying to do."