Cape Town - Drug abuse remains the biggest threat to pupils’ safety while schools reported incidents of stabbings and physical assault.
This is according to Equal Education’s (EE) latest research report on school safety in the Western Cape, called “iSafety Ngoku: Seeking Sanctuary in Western Cape Schools”.
The report details a series of school inspections done in August and September 2019, to assess safety conditions at 40 schools across four school districts in Cape Town.
“At the school level, some of the key problems identified include inadequate perimeter security infrastructure; a lack of safety training and support for school officials to enable them to develop and implement safety strategies; and inadequate access to psychosocial support,” the report stated.
“Schools reported receiving significant reports on incidents of physical assault resulting in serious injury to a learner (20%), stabbings (38%), sexual harassment (23%), physical assault against a teacher by a learner (18%), and physical assault resulting in significant injury to a teacher (8%).
“The biggest threats to learners’ safety in schools were identified as; drug use (85%); theft of personal property (63%); alcohol use (53%); gang violence (53%); burglary (53%), and significant vandalism (50%).”
Ravensmead community activist Dawn Marcus said gangsterism was a big problem in their area, which spilled over at schools but there was only one safety officer servicing eight schools.
“De La Rey road separates (gang) territories, and factions, so they end up fighting, especially if something happened over a weekend, they bring the fight to school. Schools cannot dismiss this, at the same time, because if something happens on that side, it falls over to the other side.
Children get off taxis, they get robbed. There isn’t even a safety plan as there was an incident where two guys were shot dead earlier this year so it came to school. Teachers were petrified because the learners’ parents are involved in gangsterism. The decision-making people don’t know the culture of our communities,” she said.
Western Cape Education MEC, David Maynier said they planned to spend R76.1 million this year on securing schools.
“We committed to constructing secure fencing at 30 schools every year for five years.
“We are also expanding the number of School Resource Officers in our schools, which are law enforcement officers stationed at our schools to tackle crime and safety matters.
“This year, we will fund an additional 18 School Resource Officers, bringing the total number of officers deployed in our schools to 46.
“And next year, we will add another 18. And the year after that, another 18, for a total of 82 officers in our schools.
And we will continue our investment into access control, holiday security, emergency security, youth development, and crime prevention activities in our schools,” he said.
Cape Times