JOHANNESBURG – The Gauteng Education Department says it has evidence that an Afrikaans school in Vereeniging has deliberately manipulated the application system to deny access to English-speaking pupils.

An urgent application brought by Horskool Overvaal to stop the admission of 55 English-speaking pupils has been postponed until Thursday.

The school claims that it is full and does not have space for more pupils.

We are going to court this morning to ensure that quality education is accessible to all our children! pic.twitter.com/Po7HBmJIbe — Panyaza Lesufi (@Lesufi) January 9, 2018

The education department has lashed out at the school for using language as a means of exclusion.

Department spokesman Steve Mabona says: ‘When you go through the system you can tell there are learners that have been skipped in the system. Probably there’s an intention to exclude English-speaking learners.”

“All those that have been skipped are English speaking. Afrikaans speaking they are not skipped. What does it say? Probably they’ve got their own justification. We want to go through the affidavits of the other schools. When we respond we’ll have more evidence to say let’s also deposit that and say this is what’s been happening.”

The department says the school has 21 classrooms which, at 40 pupils per classroom, can accommodate a total of 840 pupils.

Currently, the school has enrolled 621 pupils in Afrikaans classes, leaving 219 available placements.

Only the department can declare a school full and not the school or its governing body.