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22% of children experienced some form of violence at school: study

Ongoing press reports have highlighted the violent experiences of children in schools throughout South Africa. These range from learners being bullied and stabbed, to using or dealing drugs and alcohol on school premises.

Cyberbullying, and the use of cellphones for sexting and to record pornographic images and videos, have also featured in recent news stories.

In 2008, the Centre for Justice and Crime Prevention (CJCP) conducted the first national study of primary and secondary school learners to establish representative rates of violence associated with schools. Since then, there has been no other national study that has allowed comparison to this baseline data, and so to assess whether school violence is increasing or decreasing.

A new study, that does just that has recently been completed by the CJCP. The CJCP's 2012 National School Violence Study involved 5,939 secondary school learners in addition to school principals and educators.

The study shows that that 22.2% of children at schools have experienced some form of violence while at school, most commonly threats of violence (12.2%), assaults (6.3%) and sexual assault (4.5%). The experiences of the learners is substantiated by principals, more than four fifths (85%) of whom reported incidents of physical violence perpetrated by learners on fellow learners in their school in the preceding year.

While the rates of threats of violence against learners has decreased over the past five years, rates of assaults and sexual assaults have increased.

There is significant variation in trends at a provincial level, with incidents of assault in Mpumalanga doubling over the past five years, and tripling in North West province, and increases in assault also seen in Gauteng, Limpopo, the Eastern Cape and KwaZulu Natal. The number of learners experiencing sexual assault at school has risen in all provinces, with the exception of Gauteng, which records a significant drop from 4.4% in 2008, to 0.7% of learners in 2012 reporting some form of sexual assault at school in 2013. Rates of robbery at school have remained relatively consistent in most provinces, with only the Free State showing a dramatic change, with a 13.7% drop reported by learners.

The most common sites within the school for violence to occur is now reported by learners to be the classroom itself, rather than playing field or toilet areas, which were reported as the most common sites in 2008. This reflects directly on the manner in which classrooms are managed, and on the presence of educators in the classroom.

Bullying (the repeated use or threat of violence against an individual based on an unequal power relationship), is also very commonly reported, with 13% of learners reported being bullied at school. This makes bullying more common than any other single type of violence experienced by learners in schools. Being bullied is shown to increase vulnerability of learners to other forms of school violence such as assault, robbery and sexual assault, which means that many of those being bullied are also being victimized by other forms of violence. Cyber bullying, and other forms of online threats and violence, also impact on learners well-being, and on their ability to concentrate at school. Not explored in the 2008 study, the 2012 study shows that one in five learners have experienced some form of cyberbullying. A strong relationship exists between experiences of online bullying, and offline bullying, with vulnerability to offline bullying increasing vulnerability to cyberbullying.

While the Department of Basic Education has taken concrete steps to advocate a holistic and whole-school approach to violence prevention at school, there is substantial work that needs to be done at the provincial and school level to ensure the implementation of such an approach.

Rather than adopting piecemeal and intuitive response-driven strategies, approaches that are led by evidence, and that focus on prevention of violence are required.

These need to be school-based, with local diagnostic and prevention plans developed and implemented, based on local priorities and resources, that draw on the experiences and contribution of everyone within the school body: learners, parents, school management and administrative staff. This will ensure that strategies are appropriately targeted, and resources allocated where they can achieve the most significant and sustainable impact.

School management need to be held accountable for safety outcomes. Standardized indicators, with data collected at a district, provincial and national level will allow for ongoing monitoring of levels of violence, and appropriate remedial steps to be taken.

Finally, the school environment is inextricably embedded in the broader social and community context, and parents and community members have an important role to play in making school safe. Failure of parents to engage in a constructive way with school authorities will undermine the ability to achieve safe school.

  • Source: The Centre for Justice and Crime Prevention

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