Pretoria - Community-based organisations in Eersterust have decried the slow pace of proactive action by education stakeholders in combating the high incidence of bullying at schools.
The organisations said they were disheartened by the pace of action, saying it might take another bullying incident to start doing the rounds on social media to get the relevant departments to make a meaningful intervention.
They said they were worried as reports of fights and incidents of bullying from local schools were received almost every day, and not just from high schools.
Kgothatso Moloto, the founder and president of the NPO Voice It In Action, said they were disappointed that following a fight involving a group of female pupils at Eersterust Secondary School at the end of last year, nothing has been done to address the core difficulties experienced by learners at schools in the area.
Moloto said even though several meetings were held with education stakeholders on bullying and violence, no tangible solutions were brought to the table.
“The issue of violence in our schools talks to a bigger societal problem and that is why we as organisations are here, to rally youth in the community who can help the schools, but our programmes can’t be implemented as there is no support from the departments.”
He said despite organisations calling on the Department of Education in the province to intervene or assist with programmes to deal with fights in the community involving pupils, their pleas had fallen on deaf ears.
“A lot of issues and challenges have been identified which require a higher level of engagement.”
Ruth Mosley of Eersterust Unite said fighting between pupils was a serious problem in the community, with children now fighting every day.
She said although there were now fewer incidents of bullying at Eersterust Secondary School, organisations working in the area had discovered that the problem had got out of hand at other schools in Eersterust, including at Prosperitus Secondary School.
Mosely said a pupil had been in hospital since last week Friday, following fight in which the pupil was hit with a beer bottle.
“We want to see proactive steps being taken by the relevant department to curb this problem, because it is of no use having countless meetings and discussions with no plan of action at the end. Politics needs to be taken out of the equation so we can find real solutions because our biggest fear right now as organisations is that someone may end up dying from these altercations and we don’t want to see that happening."
The department had yet to comment by late yesterday.
Pretoria News