From the classroom to the courtroom: litigating education rights in South Africa

This chapter focuses on two streams of education litigation concerning public schools in South Africa: first, cases concerning contestation over the power to formulate policy for schools in the education system established in the new democratic era; and, second, cases seeking to compel the state to provide specific education inputs. In respect of the power to determine key school policies, the South African Constitutional Court has sought to strike a balance between recognising the democratic and community-level legitimacy of school governing bodies, on one hand, and the need to empower government to act in the interests of all students and to promote equal education, on the other. In the second category of cases, the courts incrementally developed the content of the right to a basic education in section 29(1)(a).