VIDEO: Fighting violence in SA schools ‘everyone’s responsibility’
“The problems at schools are vast and go beyond just learner-on-learner violence.”
Very little has been done to fight violence in South African schools, the National Press Club heard on Tuesday.
“The problems at schools are vast and go beyond just learner-on-learner violence,” said national professional teachers’ organisation of SA (Naptosa) executive director Basil Manuel.
“Fighting violence in schools is everyone’s responsibility and should not be the police and teachers’ responsibility only.”
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Another problem was the misspending of resources such as the skills fund, he said.
“It is meant for the development of teachers, however, it is not spent appropriately to address the people who matter, the first being school principals.
“If we don’t attend to the management cadre of our schooling structure we are not going to make a difference because there is a depth of good management,” he said.
Manuel said without using the monies correctly they will not get to the root cause of these problems.
Manuel was speaking as part of a panel to address a briefing of the press club in Pretoria on Tuesday.
Another panellist visible policing head Major-General Thokozani Mathonsi said although it was one of their responsibilities to make the schools safe, police did not want to create a situation where schools became a “crime scene”.
“To avoid that, in 2011, we signed a protocol with the department of basic education on how to intensify our interventions in terms of safety in the schools.”
He said to date, more than 20 000 schools have been linked to police stations and they have also appointed dedicated safety officers to run awareness campaigns in schools.
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“What is very critical in terms of the protocol we have agreed is that at each and every school there must be a school safety committee to identify risk factors that are likely to affect the safety of the school,” he said.
He said in some schools these committees were not functioning as they should, but they were working on them.
Co-head of research at Equal Education Roné McFarlane said the media could play an important role in helping South Africans understand the scourge of violence in schools and stakeholders find solutions.
She said the media could help the audiences understand the causes of violence rather than just unpacking the manifestations thereof.
“We are always trying to find solutions. I think one of the things that need to be done is a much stronger inter-sectoral approach to solving the problem of school violence. Where is the relationship between [the department of basic education] and the social development [department], and health department? All these parties need to come together and really deal with the issue of school violence,” she said.
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SA democratic teachers union deputy general secretary Nkosana Dolopi said what should be looked at is the causes of violence.
“Currently we are having a sick society, we are a society that use violence in whatever demand they would be having. We have have created an environment which believes that for you to get something you need to use violence
He said children were exposed to violence and as a result used violence to resolve any problem they came across.
“Gangsterism, alcohol and drug abuse are happening in our communities and transported to schools, we need to address them at the level of our communities,” he said.
Stakeholders from other civil organisations such as AfriForum, Fedsas, South African Teachers Union and the Catholic Institute of Education were also present.
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