Post-apartheid schooling has seen a proliferation in private, and specifically, religious-based
schools. These schools, while constituted within the South African Schools Act of 1996,
can present a challenging demand, in that the customary religious practices of certain
private religious schools might be seen as incompatible with the procedural ramifications of
the aforementioned Act. As an instance of this incompatibility, we commence this article by
examining one of South African schools’ greatest challenges – teenage pregnancy. Firstly,
by specifically looking at how Muslim-based schools respond to teenage pregnancies, we
raise the concern that the exclusion of teenage pregnant girls might not only bring the
representatives of two different constituencies – namely Muslim-based schools and the SA
Schools Act – into conflict with one another, but that it might also engender the possibility
of exclusion of others. Secondly, by examining whether learners of a particular religious
faith can be excluded from schooling on religious grounds, we argue that a plausible
understanding of cosmopolitanism propels the expectation that all diverse learners should
be recognised as legitimate participants in a school republic irrespective of their violation of
religious sanctity. This claim is corroborated by the argument that internal inclusion can
most appropriately be realised through an emphasis on the equalisation of voice that affords
even the most vulnerable in schools (that is learners) an opportunity to stake their claim to
inclusion based on invoking their legitimate voices in matters that affect them.