A father who asked the Gauteng High Court (Johannesburg) to stop his two sons being expelled from a private primary school in Johannesburg has lost his case. The court ordered that the boys be taken out of Pridwin Preparatory School by the end of the year, notes a TimesLIVE report.

Acting Judge Clare Hartford dismissed an application by the boys' parents to declare a decision by the school's headmaster, Selwyn Marx, to expel the pupils, as ‘unconstitutional, unlawful and invalid’.

The boys, aged six and 10, are in Grades 1 and 5. Marx cancelled the siblings' contracts because of their father's offensive behaviour on the sports field. He told the father that ‘my cancellation of the contract has nothing to do with your boys, who are both model pupils, but has everything to do with your conduct’.

The school produced affidavits from staff, including match officials, that showed the father to be rude, aggressive and confrontational on the sports field. Hartford said the boys' rights to basic education did not include the right of a pupil to attend an independent school. She said if this were the case, every pupil ‘would claim entitlement to attend only the best fully independent schools’ and that ‘chaos would ensue’.

Commenting on the parents' argument that the sins of the father should not be visited upon his children, Hartford said the doctrine should also include that the sins of the children's father ‘should equally not be visited upon other children’. ‘There is absolutely no reason why the first applicant's children should be protected from his sins at the school while all the other 445 children in the school should suffer as a result of his sins,’ said the judge.

Full TimesLIVE report