MORE CALLS FOR SAFETY IN SCHOOLS

Nhlanhla Mabaso

Schools resumed with their academic activities today with both teachers and learners continuing with usual classroom business. The issue of security, however, remains a major concerned in most if not all schools and this because of the chaotic violence that took place in schools across the country over the past months.

Over the past few years, fights that have broken out between learners in schools never came as a shock. These fights are caused by little things among learners and should normally be issues teachers handle; but violence has slowly creeped in, even leading to deaths within school premises. Last year in the North West province a teacher was stabbed and later died in the hospital from the attack by a learner.

Blazon Magazine spoke to a teacher in the South Coast, Lindelwa Kheswa* and she briefly said “I think we should work with the South African Police Service (SAPS) to create more awareness on drugs and substance abuse because they are a contributing factor in all these violence we are experiencing in our schools. As a teacher, I don’t feel safe at work especially because students nowadays have a tendency of back chatting when spoken to and we can’t really do much to stop that. We have to ensure that we are safe and don’t say a lot of things that will lead to a fight or argument because these students arm themselves with knifes and they are always ready to attack and claim to be protecting themselves and that teachers are the ones who are a treat.”

Kheswa added that School Governing Bodies (SGB) and Police Forums should be able to assist if they put more effort and value, not just in schools but also in communities.

Efforts to get comments from the Congress of South African Students (COSAS) and the MEC of Education in the province were unsuccessful.

Image Courtesy: Department of Communication