The SA human Rights Commission Report was prompted by the death of three learners in the North West Province caused by the fire at the hostels of the North West School for the Deaf. The investigation established that at the time of the fire there were woefully inadequate safety and security measures in place to protect learners. The commission's investigation concluded that the North West School for the Deaf, North West Education Department and the Minister of Basic Education fail to comply with the applicable legislation and policy. If children with disabilities are systematically endangered within the special school environment due to lack of safety and security mechanisms design to reasonably accommodate the specific disability, this is constitute and infringement of a child's right to dignity, equality, health security, a safe environment and a basic education.
Any routine exposure of children with disabilities to hazards, born of inadequate safety and inappropriate security measures, would be a form of neglect does not serve the best interest of the child as required in the Constitution. The failure to provide safety and security measures in the event of any emergency can also be interpreted as a form of discrimination. The crude and naked facts staring us in the face are that each day parents of these children send them to school as they are compelled to. They expose their children to danger which could lead to certain death. This is a fact that stares learners and teachers at Khayalethu and Sigcau Special Schools in the face on a daily basis, and they battle with poor infrastructure, lack of a school promised 10 years ago to Khayalethu Special School and no fencing at hostels to fend off sex pests.
The minimum norms and standards for public school infrastructure contain insufficient provision for special schools and timeframe for compliance with universal design is 2030, this is unacceptable. The current school infrastructure budget will surely be felt more by special schools. The Sias policy outlining quite detail how to determine the level of support for individual learners, but it doesn't go in specifics around how the support should be provided and is quite silent on special school provisioning as the norms and standard that were meant to be adopted with the policy are just guidelines. Therefore, there is no comprehensive and building norms and standards regulations - inadequate provisions made in the liquor and policy framework relating to post provisioning in special schools and special schools hostels does not take into account the need for 24 hours supervision of learners in special school hostels.
Sub-supervision is more demanding and requires more specialised skills. There are no norms and standards setting out the minimum qualifications of staff requiring experience for special schools and support staff. Adequate staff development plan are not in place to ensure staff developed the necessary skills to ensure learners' safety and security, taking into account specific learner needs. The insurance of safety and security at special school will only be realised when proper norms and standards are in place with regard to post provisioning, accommodation, transport and infrastructure and when proper vetting and training of educators and caregivers is continuously monitored and implemented.
We urge the Department of the Basic Education to conduct thorough health and safety audit for all special schools per province to ensure that safety policies are in place and implemented. Failure to do so will be an indictment on the department's incapability to carry out this mandate. We support this report.