The South African Communist Party (SACP) in the Western Cape has slammed what it calls the privatisation of schools in the province.

In a statement released on Thursday‚ the party condemned “the idea of commodifying our education system by annexing public schools and delivering them into the hands of profit-driven consortiums”.

“The privatisation of our education system has been presented as a collaboration between the provincial government‚ the community and private consortiums‚’ the party said.

“This ploy by the Western Cape Education Department (WCED) is nothing more than the implementation of neoliberal policy‚ policy that will ignore and censor the community‚ parents‚ teachers and workers say in the governance of the school. Developing young minds must be done in the context of societal needs and not profit margins and annual performance results.

“Our comrades in SADTU and SACP branch leaders have provided first-hand experiences of how these ‘collaboration Schools’ have been bulldozed in (to communities). With no proper consultation and comprehensive explanation‚ parents‚ teachers and workers have been at the receiving end of this ploy. This attitude and behaviour is symptomatic of the WCED — under Donald Grant poor schools were arbitrarily closed down.”

The party also congratulated matriculants in the province‚ but warned the Western Cape provincial government “not to be triumphalist” about its pass rate‚ urging it to focus on poorer schools that did not do as well.