Pretoria - The latest survey released by StatsSA showed that a significant number of children in schools in the country still endured corporal punishment although it has long been outlawed.
Corporal punishment was most common in schools in the Eastern Cape (12,7%) and in the Free State (12,6%) and KwaZulu-Natal (10.1%). By comparison only 1,1% of learners in the Western Cape and 1,3% of learners in Gauteng reported being subjected to this sort of punishment.
Although teachers were not sparing the rod, Chief Director of Social Statistics, Dr Isabelle Schmidt said generally the percentage of learners who experienced corporal punishment at school in 2017 has decreased.
Schmidt was addressing media at the 2017 General Household Survey (GHS) briefing.
“Nationally, the percentage of learners that have reportedly experienced corporal punishment at school has dropped from 16,6% in 2009 to 6,8% in 2017,” said Schmidt.
Corporal punishment is any punishment in which physical force is used and means to cause pain or discomfort – that, in short, is the definition by the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child. That means grabbing a kid by the ear or pinching a thigh too.
Any form of hitting has been banned in schools for 21 years. The South African Schools Act states: "No person may administer corporal punishment at a school to a learner.” Contravene this and you may be charged with assault. The act goes further to prohibit psychological abuse too.
In the health sector it revealed that less than 17% of South African households have medical aid.
It said that between 2002 and 2017, the percentage of individuals covered by a medical aid scheme increased marginally from 15.9% to 16.9%. During this time, the number of individuals who were covered by a medical aid scheme increased from 7.3 million to 9.5 million people.