OP-ED: Consultation Is Not an Afterthought: Parental Rights and the Siyalingana Guide

Consultation Is Not an Afterthought: Parental Rights and the Siyalingana Guide

When a parent leaves a four-year-old at an early learning centre, they trust that what happens there will reflect, and not quietly replace, the values taught at home. That trust is the foundation of public education. It is also the heart of a question South Africa has been working through for more than two years.

A Coalition, led by senior leaders of the Christian, Islamic and African traditional spirituality faith communities, has been engaging and challenging the Department of Basic Education (DBE) on the so-called "ECE Toolkit", or "Gender-Responsive Pedagogy for Early Childhood Education (GRP4ECE)". This is a teacher-training resource, aimed at teachers and practitioners who work with children from birth to nine years of age. At issue is a revised version of this “toolkit”, now uploaded to the Department's website under the name Siyalingana: Promoting Gender Equality in Early Childhood, A Practical Guide for Teachers and Practitioners in South Africa (the Siyalingana guide).

The guide's stated objectives deserve a fair hearing. South Africa carries one of the highest burdens of gender-based violence in the world, and few would dispute that children should learn in settings free of bullying, ridicule and discrimination. Helping a child who is teased to feel safe, and discouraging the notion that some children may not play, speak or lead because of their sex, are goals most parents share. The Minister of Basic Education has also clarified, in correspondence dated 18 March 2026, that the guide is a teacher development resource rather than a curriculum for learners, that it has not been built into the Grades R to 3 curriculum, and that certain phrases have been revised.  

These clarifications matter, and they narrow the dispute. But they do not resolve it. The deeper question whether parents were given a meaningful opportunity to take part in decisions about materials that touch contested questions affecting their very young children. South Africa's own Education White Paper of 1995 states the starting point plainly: parents bear the primary responsibility for the education of their children, hold the right to be consulted, and retain what it calls an inalienable right to choose the religious and cultural basis of their child's education, particularly in the early years.

This concern is not new. It has been raised and pressed consistently since 2023 by a broad coalition of religious, cultural and educational associations. Clarification offered after the fact is not the same as consultation offered before it. Our Constitution does not rank one right above another. The right to freedom of conscience, religion, thought, belief and opinion in section 15, read with the protection of religious and cultural communities in section 31, sits alongside the State's duty to advance equality and to act in the best interests of the child under section 28(2). None of these is absolute. Each may be limited, but only where the limitation is reasonable and justifiable under section 36, proportional and only where no less restrictive means exist.  

Public schools are also expected to maintain ideological neutrality. Neutrality in this sense does not mean the absence of values, and it does not require religion to be stripped from public life. It means that the convictions represented in a school community are treated even-handedly, and that no single worldview is pressed upon every family. Measured against that standard, the guide's continued use of concepts such as gender identity, defined as male, female, a combination or neither, within a teacher resource intended for the earliest years of schooling, is not a trivial matter. It is the kind of contested content that calls for transparency, parental consultation and reasonable accommodation rather than quiet inclusion.

The Department describes the guide as a resource for teachers, not a lesson for learners. That distinction is formally fair, and it should be respected. But teacher-facing material does not stay on the staff room shelf. It shapes the language a teacher uses, the questions a teacher asks and the framework a teacher brings into a room of small children. A resource written for teachers is still felt by children. One point deserves care, however. Some of the sharper language quoted in earlier public communications belonged to an older version of the toolkit. The current published guide should be read on its own terms, and any criticism should track what the present document actually says. Such accuracy protects the credibility of the concern rather than weakens it.

There is a more balanced path, and it is not a difficult one. The Department could publish the revised guide in full and in an accessible form, so that parents can read for themselves what their children's teachers are being trained to convey. It could then engage parents and stakeholders openly on the revised content and its implementation. And it could commit, as a matter of principle, to early childhood materials that are age-appropriate and ideologically neutral, particularly where they touch issues that many families regard as deeply significant. None of this obstructs the protection of children. It strengthens it, because protection pursued together with families tends to endure, while protection imposed over their objection tends to fracture.

This is not a contest between the State and the family, nor between schools and faith. Teachers, principals, district officials and parents are not opponents. They are partners in the same task, each with a legitimate role. Protecting children and including parents are not competing constitutional goals. They are two parts of the same obligation, and a system that treats them as rivals will serve neither well.

South Africa's classrooms should remain places where every child is safe and every family is respected. Those commitments are not in tension. They are held together by a simple constitutional discipline, that the State, when it touches the formation of its youngest citizens, should move with parents rather than around them. Where the State leads on matters this sensitive, the family should not be the last to be told.