The department of basic education is calling for a symposium with police and other government departments to discuss how to tackle challenges at schools.

This was announced by minister Angie Motshekga in Pretoria on Monday.

The announcement follows a meeting the minister held with the Council of Education Ministers.

"We are deeply concerned by the incidents taking place at our schools. We need to continue to work with communties and law-enforcement organisations to ensure that we arrest this type of behaviour.

About 18 000 schools have been paired with police stations as part of a protocol between the SAPS and education," Motshekga said.

She also briefed the meeting that the department was ready for senior certificate exams, noting that the department is expecting a cohort of 787 281 pupils to sit for this year's exams at 8 000 examination centres.

"In terms of readiness, we have been closely tracking each of the nine provinces so that we can pick up challenges in areas such as curriculum coverage in time to intervene."