Right2Know supports the fight for quality education

The Right2Know campaign fully endorses Equal Education’s memorandum of 21 March 2011, to be submitted to President Zuma and the Minister of Basic Education Angie Motshekga at a mass rally on Human Rights Day. (Read the memo here.)

Equal Education is demanding that the Minister fulfil her promise to create minimum standards on infrastracture for our schools: by law these must provide for “adequate classrooms, a laboratory, a library or media centre, a computer centre, storage facilities, enough toilets, a playground, sports facilities, a school hall, a staff room, a kitchen, an administrative centre, electricity and water.” The Minister has promised these by 1 April 2011.

The Right2Know is a campaign to defend, advance and deepen everyone’s right to access information in South Africa, and we view access to quality education as a cornerstone to that vision.

South Africa’s learners cannot fulfil their ‘right to know’ if they do not have access to a proper learning environment, to schools that are safe and suitably equipped, and to teachers who are adequately trained and paid. In that light the Right2Know’s national working group supports Equal Education’s demands for our leaders to provide a National Uniform Minimum Norms and Standards for School Infrastructure

These are crucial steps to achieving quality education for all learners, and to creating a society where all enjoy the right to access and to share knowledge. We call on President Zuma and Minister Motshekga to meet these demands!