By Janice Bleazard
In January next year, the doors of the Equal Education Law Centre will open in Cape Town’s city centre. The Equal Education Law Centre – or ‘the EELC’ for short – will have a team of lawyers who will work hand-in-hand with Equal Education to protect and advance the right to education in South Africa. These lawyers will help Equal Education to stop unlawful activities at schools – for example, discrimination against learners, corporal punishment, expulsion without prior disciplinary proceedings; closure of schools without proper procedure; failure by government to provide textbooks and other basic resources, and so on. They will also support EE’s campaign work, such as the Minimum Norms & Standards for School Infrastructure Campaign, and may launch big cases of their own to promote quality and equal education through the law.