Abstract:
This paper focuses on the school's protection of the right to education for immigrant learners as perceived by
their parents. With its approach to the subject from the human rights-based educational perspective, this
paper sought to examine immigrant parents' views on their children's right to education against their
background as vulnerable and marginalised school community members. The assumption on which the
study presented in this paper is based is that meaningful discussion on the right to education for immigrant
learners cannot be disconnected from the challenges their parents face in educating them. Immigrant
parents have their views and experiences relating to children's educational rights, which are seldom studied.
Guided by this view, a qualitative approach was followed to gather data through semi-structured individual
interviews held with parents of immigrant learners from four purposively selected South African township
schools. The results show that immigrant parents experience enormous challenges in the education of their
children in South African schools. While some of the challenges are transferred from them to their children
because of non-citizenship, they attribute most of the challenges to people who teach their children, namely,
teachers.
