Dugmore, Western Cape provincial Minister of Education, Cape Town
29 September 2006
The Chairperson - Mr Jody Collapen
Members of the panel
Colleagues
Ladies and gentlemen
Introduction
On behalf of the Western Cape Education Department (WCED), I want to thank
the SA Human Rights' Commission firstly for deciding to convene this public
hearing on school-based violence and secondly, doing so in Cape Town. This is a
critical matter for us in the Western Cape as we seek to implement our core
mandate, which is to deliver the national curriculum statement to our learners,
build our human capital in the province, and ensure that every learner develops
his or her full potential.
School-based violence does, as your own terms of reference suggest, have the
potential to infringe on the rights of learners, but it also negatively impacts
on our ability to deliver on our education mandate. The vision of this
provincial Government is to build a Home for All. Our path towards this vision
is an economic development strategy, Ikapa Elihlumayo to grow and share the
Cape. Poverty and unemployment are critical challenges, which stand in the way
of us achieving this vision.
Central to the Ikapa strategy is the building of human capital and the
provision of skills needed to grow our economy. We see school-based violence as
an issue, which not only impacts on the realisation of human rights in our
Constitution but one, which also potentially hinders the attainment of our
vision in the Western Cape. It is for this reason that the Social Cluster of
the provincial Cabinet has decided that school safety is our number one
priority. Only an integrated, co-ordinated and holistic response will yield
results. This decision resulted in an additional allocation to community safety
in this financial year, which saw the deployment of Bambanani School safety
volunteers to 100 schools in the metropolitan area of Cape Town.
At present a task team from our Department and Community Safety is hard at
work developing an integrated school safety strategy, which will be submitted
initially to the Social Cluster and then to the provincial Cabinet itself. It
is important to understand the work that is currently being done by our safe
schools division, often in partnership with other government departments. The
departmental report, which the Secretary-General (SG) Mr Ron Swartz will talk
to, outlines our ongoing work.
This focus on the legislative and policy framework by the Commission will be
of great assistance to the development of our provincial strategy on school
safety. It is clear to me that an integrated policy framework at national level
will give much needed focus and guidance on roles and responsibilities. Crime,
family violence, gangsterism, poverty, substance abuse, racism and sexism
influence the psyche of our youth, which in turn impact on behaviour in the
school and classroom.
It is thus not only external threats which result in school- based violence,
but the attitude and behaviour of our learners and educators. An impression is
often created in the manner in which school-based violence is reported on that
government only responds to crises. This is far from the truth. In fact, we
have an integrated prevention, crime control, and intervention and response
strategy.
Safe Schools Programme
Our Safe Schools Programme was initiated in August 1997 after the shooting
of a grade 10 learner at Sithembele Matiso Secondary School. At that stage 20
youths had died because of ongoing violence in Gugulethu. There were real
threats to schools on the Cape Flats with gangs operating in the surrounding
communities and learners being caught up in the conflict. Since then our Safe
Schools Programme has developed to the point where our schools generally offer
safer environments against outside threats under the most difficult
circumstances. The establishment of school safety committees, ongoing work with
educators and learners, the establishments of partnerships with the SAPS and
local communities have all assisted.
Of great concern now is the fact that some learners at school are either
members of, or are influenced by gangs who see schools as a base for
recruitment and distribution of drugs. This has resulted in violent attacks on
fellow learners and the intimidation of teachers. The SG will take us through
some of the detail of what the Western Cape Education Department (WCED) has
done so far in terms of providing safe places for our children. He will
describe the first tier of protection, the things like fences, alarms, and
security gates. He will also describe some elements of the second tier of
protection, the formal safety networks and systems that have been set up at
schools.
But whilst the bad things grab headlines, what is often not reported on and
what is not common knowledge, is the fairly successful outcomes of our crime
prevention and attitudinal or behaviour modification programmes. Through
learner and educator seminars, our focus has been on positive discipline,
conflict resolution and mediation.
The selection and training of peer educators and mediators has also built
capacity at school level and contributed to the establishment of a human rights
culture at many of our schools.
The curriculum and classroom
I want to touch on two other tiers, ladies and gentlemen, which is the
classroom and secondly, our surrounding communities. The new national
Curriculum Statement has massive potential for giving us the turnaround we
need. The many outcomes, such as those in Life Orientation, provide hard skills
for life and living, the "ubuntu" outcomes plus the over-arching outcomes give
us a toolkit for change. The kit is there. The question is: "Are our teachers
able to work with this kit?" Our teachers are quite right when they signal to
us that they are on the verge of burnout and that they battle to deliver a
curriculum and play a pastoral and social worker role at the same time. But
school is not what it has always been. In the context of a disintegrating
family unit and all the influences we have sketched, the teacher is indeed far
more of a social worker than ever before. The teacher is the faith-worker, the
parent surrogate.
In many cases the school literally feeds the child. If we then add onto this
a new curriculum and an associated set of needs, we know that it is true when
our teachers tell us about stress. We as a department need perhaps to think
more carefully about how to support our teachers better. We need to ask
ourselves precisely what it is that will make our teaching more effective so
that we can produce not only the skills that the economy needs, but also the
tools for community turnarounds.
I believe that our curriculum does indeed have the potential to help our
youngsters contend with drugs, peer pressures, racism, gender-bias, bullying
and all forms of violence. Many of these issues are, in fact, already being
addressed. What is required is sustained and ongoing teacher development to
assist our teachers achieves these outcomes and gives them the practical skills
to manage learners in the classroom. Linked to this is ongoing support to our
school based management teams and School Governing Bodies (SGBs) to ensure
adherence to codes of conduct at school level.
Earlier this year we have launched our first ever provincial Representative
Council for Learners. We have a strong cohort of Peer Counsellors being trained
in 140 of our high schools as part of our extended HIV and AIDS programme.
Their extraordinary strengths alongside the fledgling Representative Council of
Learners (RCL) movement could bring a convergence of purpose to our youth.
Ongoing investment in the learner leadership across the province and in every
school has the potential of creating role models who become the example for our
learners in general.
Schools and community
This leads me to the second tier. Our Premier said that: "Strong communities
based on vibrant and loving families are the cornerstone of prosperity. What
guarantees success is when ordinary people are organised and networked into and
across community structures both to protect and serve communities". I am
convinced that it is through inspired partnerships and the conscious
cultivating of social capital that we will find the power to make huge and real
strides.
I am talking about all kinds of partnerships from the small local partnerships
between, for example, parents and the school, right through to macro
partnerships between government departments, with civil society, with business,
with labour.
"I believe a school is part of the community, and there is a reciprocal
relationship between safe schools and safe communities. A community that feels
ownership and pride for its school does not vandalise it and does not allow
others to do so. About two months ago we held our inaugural Community Schools
Initiative week, which is an initiative aimed to make our schools re-look the
relations with their communities. Some 200 of our schools showcased amazing
existing relationships. Schools found considerable and often unexpected support
from small local businesses and agencies.
A principal of a Mitchell's Plain school told me that they had regular
incidents of burglary and that they had suspected the residents of a nearby
informal settlement. But I thought the way they responded to this was
fantastic; they instead visited the residents and delivered to them blankets,
clothes and food.
Another Mitchell's Plain school had a problem of gangsters frequently having
running battles on the premises. What they then did was to offer one of the
classrooms to the local neighbourhood watch as a base, and the school appears
not to have any problems now.
A Lotus River school had been burgled every month since the start of the
school year. The principal then persuaded an armed response company to set up a
satellite office in the school parking lot as a base in the community. This
school has also involved parent volunteers in playground and toilet monitoring
duties. This has had the effect of ending the spate of burglaries at the
school. These are just some examples of communities and schools that are using
creative, cost-effective ways, which contribute to safer environments.
So, what is the way forward?
We must keep in mind that we have a 42% unemployment figure in the age range
from teenager to age 35. These are our young parents. Hundreds of our older
parents are those whose studies were interrupted or ended with the strife of
1976 and then again in the mid-80s. The cycle of poverty and unemployment is
hard to break. It is easy then to understand the attraction of the
cash-incentives of drug dealing on the one hand and the escape offered by
drug-taking on the other. Apartheid was sustained violence - people's
identities were violated; their prospects were blighted; their languages became
labels of difference and prejudice.
It is against this background that Government must respond and act. To this
effect, we are developing an integrated school safety strategy that will be
strengthened by partnerships, where more resources will be allocated to
resource learners' needs. I do not believe there are quick fix solutions.
Clearly a national policy framework will assist.
This integrated strategy must include a balance between crime control and
crime prevention within the schooling system. To create a safe school
environment is complex. The integrated safe schools strategy should culminate
in policy, action, co-ordinated intervention and possibly legislation. There
are a number of recommendations that have been formulated over the last while
to address violence in schools. Some of these have already been implemented
successfully whilst others require wide-ranging actions and additional
resources. These enjoy the attention of the department at the highest level and
are the subject of the work of the task team.
In conclusion
In conclusion ladies and gentlemen: the human heart has an astonishing capacity
for "hope" even when things seem hopeless. But "hope" is best nurtured and
multiplied when fuelled by the sense of a plan. We need to both acknowledge the
work that is currently being done, but admit that issues of co-ordination,
co-operation and clear policy frameworks and resources are required to achieve
greater success.
We will not make a difference unless we work together: as parents, teachers,
learners, Neighbourhood Watch members, Bambanani volunteers, government at all
spheres, civil society, all the individuals present here and agencies
presenting at this hearing. I look forward to engaging with the Commission
today and eagerly await your findings and recommendations. We will also share
progress we are making towards an integrated school safety strategy in the
province.
I thank you.
For enquiries:
Gert Witbooi
Media Liaison Officer
Office of the MEC for Education
Western Cape
Tel: (021) 467 2523
Fax: (021) 425 5689
E-mail: gwitbooi@pgwc.gov.za
Issued by: Department of Education, Western Cape Provincial Government
29 September 2006
Source: Western Cape Provincial (http://wced.wcape.gov.za)
