After the world War in 1945, the conference of heads found the union getting more relevant in the face of many challenges among them the passing of repressive legislation, mostly emanating from the apartheid regime.
The conference of heads found the union getting more relevant in the face of many challenges among them the passing of repressive legislation, mostly emanating from the apartheid regime.
The Natal Report on Education and the Transvaal Draft Ordinance invested great power in the Director of Education, even allowing him to close private schools if this was considered necessary.
In 1945, ten Natal private schools formed the Private Schools Association to speak out against their Provincial Council’s recent Report on Education.
1940s and 1950s
- The Conferences that occurred in the late 1940s and 1950s focussed largely on these threats to the freedom of independent schools.
- A more formal constitution was drawn up for the Conference, which remained unaltered until 1967
- The School Fees Refund Insurance Scheme was set in place and adopted by many schools.
- The Industrial Fund for the Assistance to Private Schools in South Africa’ was the lack of adequate facilities for the teaching of science in private schools.
- Conference was divided on the question of state subsidies when ‘the dangers of bureaucratic or totalitarian interference in private education’ seemed to be more menacing.
- National Education Policy Act (1967) that gave a small central advisory council tremendous power to control primary and secondary education in any way they saw fit.
- The conference set up a Standing Committee so that it only admitted members whose schools did not receive aid.
- The name of the Conference was to be changed to the Conference of Headmasters and Headmistresses of Grant-Aided and Independent Private Schools.
- It soon became obvious that it would be more detrimental to all the private schools (whether grant-aided or not) to appear divided over this issue, and Conference resolved to leave the composition of the Standing Committee intact.