Johannesburg — HOËRSKOOL (High school) Ermelo principal Koos Kruger would probably be fired after being found guilty of four misconduct charges relating to the former Afrikaans-only school's struggle against the education department's decision to force it to admit children who wanted to be taught in English, said Mpumalanga education department spokesman Hlahla Ngwenya on Friday.

Kruger was found guilty on Thursday of four charges by a Mpumalanga education department disciplinary hearing.

Although Kruger's Suid Afrikaanse Onderwysersunie (SAOU) attorney Piet Delport had not been informed of a decision to fire Kruger, he said on Friday he was expecting this.

Ngwenya said the next step for Kruger would be to appeal to Mpumalanga education MEC Siphosezwe Masango against the provincial education department's decision to dismiss him.

Delport said Kruger would do that and if the decision was not overturned the SAOU would lodge a dispute in the Education Labour Relations Council.

The union was prepared to take the matter through the Labour Court "all the way to the Constitutional Court" because firing Kruger, 58, would have a serious effect on his end-of-service package, Delport said.

Kruger had an effective 42 years of experience (32 calendar years and overtime) and if he was fired he could lose about 35% of the exit package he was due, he said.

"The school always got a 100% matric pass rate, there were lots of distinctions and sometimes the best-performing learner in the province came from that school. Are you telling me the man didn't know how to do his job?"

Kruger was suspended on full pay in January for failing last November to submit to the education department the application forms of children who had applied to the school to learn in Afrikaans, for failing last November to accept from his supervisor, CAF Hlatshwayo, an admission list, and for failing this January to register English-speaking children.

But on March 7 last year the department had withdrawn Kruger's responsibility for registering pupils, so he had no authority to do this, said Delport.

"(The education department) had grave difficulty in explaining that ... idiotic circle of argument."

Kruger's dismissal was a death knell for Afrikaans single-medium education in Mpumalanga because amendments made to the South African Schools Act, since its promulgation in 1996 had steadily eroded the powers of school governing bodies (SGBs) and principals, said Delport.

"If you look at the constitutional imperative that formed the basis of the South African Schools Act in 1996, it was cooperation between parents (in the SGB) and the state to start a new schooling system ... amendments to the Act have steadily eroded SGB powers and now the principal has only to do what the education department says," he said.

When Kruger had turned away pupils to be taught in English, he had been taking instructions from the SGB on advice of the SAOU, Delport said.

"The union wrote to the education department to say he is getting conflicting instructions, but he is your employee, come and help him. They suspended him."