South African schools are the most dangerous in the world, with only 23% of pupils saying they feel safe at school, the South African Institute of Race Relations (SAIRR) said on Tuesday.
Spokesperson for SAIRR Thomas Blaser said a Progress in International Reading Literacy study had ranked South Africa last in terms of school safety.
”In that study South African school pupils were asked whether they felt safe when they were at school and if they had experienced incidents of stealing, bullying and injury to themselves or to others in their class within the last four weeks.
”Only 23% of South African pupils said they felt safe at school. On average, South Africa’s schools ranked more than 20 percentage points below the worldwide average of 47% of pupils saying they felt a high degree of safety in the classroom,” said Blaser.
Schools in Norway, Denmark and Sweden were the safest in the world, with approximately 70% of pupils saying they felt safe at school.
Blaser said: ”The findings of the study suggested that media reports of school violence were not merely isolated incidents but part of a growing pattern of violence and disorder.”
According to the Department of Education’s own data, published in the SAIRR report, 24% of schools had no burglar bars, 35% had no security gates and 80% had no alarm systems.
”Conditions in many schools are not only far from ideal but in many cases downright dangerous. The problem deserves urgent attention in Parliament and needs a national safety plan that will return proper law and order to the school ground,” said Blaser.
”Failing this it is difficult to see how schools will produce the skills necessary to drive the South African economy.”
The SAIRR called for urgent government intervention to halt a ”growing pattern of violence and disorder” in South African schools, said Blaser.
Crisis mode
According to a Finweek report last week, South African education is in crisis mode.
The report reveals not only a shocking skills shortage 13 years into post-apartheid South Africa, but also a fundamental crisis in an education system sorely lacking resources to equip a nation adequately for future growth.
The report points to the failure of the education system to face up to the challenges of global competition in the 21st century.
”We’re probably talking about an effort — assuming for argument’s sake we get the education system functioning optimally now — lasting an entire generation before we see the results of a well-educated society working its way through the labour market and economy,” Stellenbosch economist Servaas van den Berg told Finweek.
During the past two years, the South African education system ejected 535 000 people from school without any passing certificate and a very uncertain future.
These school leavers will join the ranks of the unemployed, says Finweek. At this time, citizens between the ages of 20 and 24 represent 14% of the labour force, but are already over-represented among the unemployed, accounting for roughly 27% of that number.
Of the 564 775 matriculants who wrote the year-end exam last year, more than 200 000 failed.
The decline in pass rate and a lack of skills, says the report, are creating a slippery slope for further economic growth.
It warns that a knowledge economy cannot survive with a severe imbalance between the educated and uneducated, causing a self-fulfilling vicious cycle in which lack of skills reduces demand and vice versa. — Sapa