Dioceses urged to come alongside Anglican schools

Provincial Standing Committee has resolved that Dioceses should play an active role in engaging with church schools as they address the issue of discrimination.

The PSC decision followed the adoption of a comprehensive report drawn up by a task team appointed by Archbishop Thabo Makgoba arising from a PSC request in 2020. The request was made in response to public controversy over complaints of past and current racial discrimination at church schools.

The task team comprised bishops, priests and educational experts and was convened by Professor Mary Metcalfe, a former head of the Wits University School of Education. A resolution adopted by PSC today asked Diocesan Bishops to facilitate the distribution of and engagement with the task team’s report by schools.

Today’s resolution came after a finding by the commission that “It is clear that schools are ready and willing to take significant strides – and many have already done so. What schools are [now] asking for is the committed and sustained attention of the church to relationships of support.”

In his homily at the opening service of PSC, the Archbishop said Dioceses needed to come alongside our schools to support them.

The full text of the PSC resolution appears below.

(Since this report was first posted, the task team’s report and the text of a pastoral letter from the Anglican Board of Education have been added below the resolution.)

Today’s resolution read:

This Provincial Standing Committee

Noting:

1. The resolution on addressing discrimination in Diocesan schools passed by Provincial Standing Committee in September 2020;
2. The Metropolitan’s appointment of a Provincial Task Team to make recommendations on how discrimination at our Diocesan Schools can best be addressed in partnership with the respective Dioceses and schools themselves.
3. The work undertaken by the appointed Task Team, according to its brief, in engaging specifically with Diocesan Bishops, Heads of Schools, School Chaplain’s and the portfolio leads on Diversity, Belonging, Inclusion & Transformation in Diocesan schools;
4. The Task Team’s submission of interim reports to the Synod of Bishops in February 2021 & Provincial Synod in September 2021;

Acknowledging that the Task Team’s work evolved into

1. working with Anglican schools to develop a set of recommendations that would not be a conclusion, but a step in an ongoing journey within the Southern African Anglican community that reflect challenges in society as a whole;
2. the realisation that addressing discrimination is not only a social responsibility in the pursuit of social justice, as envisaged in the South African Constitution, but an integral part of the mission and vision of the Anglican Church of Southern Africa;
3. the realisation that the urgency of individual and collective journeys towards wholeness and towards healing is rooted in our individual and collective acknowledgement of discrimination, in our manifestation of contrition, in taking action, in establishing trust, and thus in finding forgiveness for self and others.

Resolves that:

1. The report of the Provincial Task Team and it’s recommendations, as received by Provincial Standing Committee September 2022, be adopted;
2. Diocesan Bishops facilitate, as the Report recommends, the distribution of and engagement with the report amongst their respective schools;
3. ABESA [the Anglican Board of Education] consider and report back on the integration into its work, of the recommendations concerning it’s role, to the next Provincial Standing Committee or Provincial Synod.