The
Diocesan Board of Education. The ABE was the revitalization of
a much older and well tried Diocesan Board of Education ( DBE
), the records of which are to be found in the Anglican archives,
c/o The Library of the University of the Witwatersrand.
There exist two constitutions for the Diocesan Board of Education,
both undated, and copies of the minutes of various meetings, but
not of the original meeting. One set of minutes, dated 6th June
1896, lists the meeting as the 82nd. A subsequent report states
that there were 8 regular meetings per annum. These, computing
backwards, give the date of the first meeting of the Diocesan
Board of Education as July 1886. The minutes of the latest meeting
are those of 1940, when the racial differences in South Africa
were beginning to test the structures of the Church and the Diocesan
Board of Education was soon to disband. Thus the Diocesan Board
of Education operated for fifty four years but there follow sixty
six years during which the Anglican community in South Africa
lost ground as far as education was concerned.
The composition of the Diocesan Board of Education shows that
it took its responsibilities seriously.
• The Metropolitan, His Grace the Archbishop as chairman,
• The Coadjutator Bishop,
• The Dean,
• The Archdeacon,
• 4 canons , 8 priests and 6 members of the laity,
The State’s administration divided the population into three categories,
which the Diocesan Board of Education followed. Thus education
was for:
• the children of “ Europeans”, in what were known as Church Schools,
• the children of mixed or Coloured descent in what were then
called the Mission Schools,
• the children of Bantu people in what were then called the Native
Schools.
What is confusing today is that the mission schools were later
to be known as parish schools and the native schools to be known
as mission schools. Happily all are now known simply as schools.
The Mission schools were referred to by the state as the EC schools,
deriving from “ Englese Kerk “. Afrikaans was the prevalent language,
though the instruction was in English. Similarly, although the
prevailing ethos and discipline was Anglican, the schools were
frequented by children of all denominations. The Cape Town schools
were proud of their Muslim boys and girls, who in some instances
out-numbered the Christian pupils . The Church schools largely
took care of themselves and the Native schools were mostly beyond
the borders of the Cape Town Diocese, so the
Diocesan Board of Education was taken up with the administration
of its Parish schools.
The concerns were:
• finance,
• maintenance of the properties,
• inspection of the schools,
• overseeing of examinations
• teaching and examination of Religious Knowledge.
The pupils received a thorough, basic education. No one doubted
the partnership of the Church and State. Although, today we rue
the separate racial groupings, this was more practical than dogmatic
and one would like to think would have been shed soon enough,
given the growing awareness of the Church. However, the parish
schools did not suit the programme of the Nationalist Party Government
and were checked as part of its apartheid policy. The destruction
of the Anglican parish schools and the schools of other denominations
– for the Anglican schools were not alone - had several causes.
Many schools were uneconomic being small and far away; in Nababeep,
for instance , in 1940, the roll was 12. It made good sense to
close these schools and build in their place one central, larger,
school.
However, the building of these new schools was also tied up with
two major prongs of apartheid philosophy:
• forced removal of communities ( Group Areas)
• grading of education along racial lines ( Bantu Education )
Effective parish schools were left derelict to be replaced by
faceless batteries of classrooms, and to be staffed by people
who hated the philosophy underlying the whole scheme . Sometimes
the state did not close a school but took over its administration
and then imposed its apartheid thinking. These schools are now
referred to as “ state schools on Church property”.
No one was comfortable under these conditions and, although many
people continued to serve the children as excellent teachers,
despite their opposition to the state, a disastrous decline in
conviction and standards followed.
