1. PREFACE
2. BACKGROUND INFORMATION

1. Quantitative findings

4.1.1 Distribution of Schools of Industry and Reform Schools

4.1.2 Analysis of capacity in relation to access for sentenced children

4.1.3 Provincial capacity in relation physical space needs

2. Qualitative findings
1. Over-arching fundamental findings
2. Educational programmes
3. Educational neglect
4. Transformation issues
5. Developmental, therapeutic and care programmes
6. Behaviour management
7. Re-integration work
8. Provincial inequalities

The Department of Justice is leading on preparations to support the passing and implementation of a new law dealing with child offenders, the Child Justice Bill, B 49 of 2002. The Bill requires the co-operation and involvement of the departments of Justice and Constitutional Development, Social Development, SAPS, Correctional Services and Education. The Child Justice Bill was introduced into parliament in August 2002, and is expected to be debated in the near future.

Over and above a more general role that the Department of Education can play in promoting the goals of the Bill, the Department is very specifically involved with regard to sentencing of young offenders. The Bill provides that children may be sentenced to a "residential facility" and this is defined in the Bill as "a residential facility established by the Minister of Education or the Minister of Social Development which is designated to receive sentenced children.". This of course encompasses what the current law calls "Reform Schools" but leaves room for emerging models such as the Department of Education facilities in the Western Cape.

In inter-sectoral discussions about the planning for the implementation of this legislation the issue has been raised as to whether there will be sufficient facilities for children sentenced to residential facilities, and whether these facilities will be geographically available to children.

The Child Justice Project located in the Department of Justice has, with the permission and co-operation of the National and Provincial Departments of Education, undertaken this situational analysis of reform schools and schools of industry from the perspective of the criminal justice system, and has made recommendations to to how these facilities may be best utilized and improved to serve the needs of children in the criminal justice system.

2.1 Historical Perspective

The Children’s Protection Act of 1913 led to the transfer of Schools of Industry and Reform Schools to the Department of Education, which took place in 1917. The National and Provincial Education Departments continue to manage these institutions till today.

One of the leading lights on education reform and former principal of the Diepkloof Reformatory, Alan Paton, captured the paradigm shift taking place during the 1940s in his 1944 address to the National Social Welfare Conference. He said, "There is a third view of punishment, that it should be reformatory. This view gained much ground in this century. If this view is held, then the word ‘punishment’ becomes inappropriate and is replaced by the word ‘treatment’. The whole purpose of the transfer of reformatories of South Africa from the Department of Prisons to the Department of Education was to change their goal from one of detention to one of education."

Another significant milestone in the South African legislative reformation was the enactment of the Children’s Act of 1960, Act 33 of 1960. This Act provided for, among other things, the appointment of probation officers and the establishment, maintenance and management of Schools of Industries and Reform Schools. This Act substantively and comprehensively increased the legal protection of children.

Prior to 1969, the majority of Reform Schools and Schools were for White children with the exception of the Coloured School of Industries in Ottery. The first Indian School of Industries was built in Newcastle in 1969. So, while the reformist developments increased the protection of White children, the same could not be said for Black children.

The passing of a string of Homeland Children’s Acts in Gazankulu, Lebowa,

Venda, KwaNdebele, Transkei, KwaZulu, Ciskei, KaNgwane, Qwaqwa and

Bophuthatswana cannot be hailed as steps forward when they did not have the

financial and human resources to implement it .

In 1983 the Child Care Act, Act 74 of 1983 was passed. This Act repealed the whole of Child Care Act No. 33 of 1960 except in so far as it relates to the appointment of probation officers and the establishment, maintenance and management of schools of industries and reform schools. The Child Care Act, Act 74 of 1983 as amended wholly repealed all the " Child Care Acts" that were legislated by the Homeland Governments.

2.2 The transformation of the Child and Youth Care system

The ratification of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) in 1995 and the passing of the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa Act, Act 108 of 1996 are the most two critical milestones that increased the protection of the rights of all children.

Chapter 2 ,Sections 28, 29 and 35 of the Constitution guarantees specific rights to every child, equal access to education and a fair, appropriate treatment for children and youth accused of having committed a crime.

The Transformation of the Child and Youth Care System (TCYCS) process began in 1995. It was not a deliberately planned strategy but one that emerged when responding to a national crisis caused by an unmanaged release of over 1000 children from prisons and police cells following the promulgation of Section 29 of the Correctional Services Act, Act 08 of 1959 as amended by Act 17 of 1995.

Many of the children were transferred to Places of Safety that were unprepared for such large scale admissions and this escalated pre-existing weaknesses in the residential care system at the time.

The Inter-Ministerial Committee on Young People at Risk (IMC) was set up in June 1995. The IMC comprised, among others, the following Departments involved in managing this matter: Correctional Services, Welfare and Population Development, Health, Education, Justice and SAPS. Welfare was asked to chair the committee. In April 1996 the IMC was requested by Cabinet to investigate and report on the availability and suitability of Reform Schools, Schools of Industries and Places of Safety for the accommodation of awaiting trial youth. A team was commissioned to conduct the investigation.

The investigating team recommended, among other things, that:

• The system be moved from "control and punishment" approach to the more effective "developmental care and discipline" approach
• It would be in the children’s best interests to have one over-arching philosophy and approach throughout the continuum of care. And that arrangements between the appropriate departments begin immediately with a view to having all residential child and youth care facilities incorporated under the Ministry and Department of Welfare
• Child and Youth Care legislation to reflect the international instruments and principles of developmental care and discipline.
• National standards for all forms of residential care be developed.
• A National Working Conference be convened to look into formal and informal schooling of children and youth at risk with particular emphasis on the education of children in the residential and youth care system and the development of an appropriate range of educational curricula and methodologies.

A National Team of experts and experienced people was appointed to manage the entire TCYCS. Five critical outputs were delivered by this team.

• A broader, inter-sectoral group of people from both the government and NGO sector underwent an intensive National Transformational Leadership Course co-facilitated by international experts.
• Interim Policy Recommendations for CYC in South Africa were compiled.
• A Draft Document of Minimum Standards of Child and Youth Care was drawn up and circulated.
• Modules for Developmental Quality Assurance (DQA) were compiled, and a team trained to pilot the DQA in the provinces.
• Developmental Assessment Tools for assessing children were developed and provincial teams trained on how to use them

With all these tools and training completed, it was up to the line function officials to take this transformation process and run with it. This was done in the Western Cape Province. They now have their Policy Document and are in the process of implementation. Their view was, " the Western Cape Education Department (WCED), recognising the vital need for transformation of the education sector dealing with young people at risk, has embarked on a comprehensive process to establish an effective service for educating and reclaiming young people at risk."

Free State have also compiled a Draft Policy Document in similar vein.

3. DEFINITIONS:

A significant number of terms, phrases and concept words used in this Report have particular meanings that are either defined by law, departmental policies, child and youth care/development practice and international conventions. They are introduced here in order to facilitate a better understanding among the readers of this Report.

The objective of this study was to undertake a situational analysis of the current status of Reform Schools (RS) and Schools of Industry (SOI) and to make recommendations on how facilities can be used to support the proposed child justice system.

The study was required to Identify all facilities in the country and for each determine:

• Number of children, breakdown in terms of race and gender
• Current capacity with current staff
• Bed capacity
• Staff – numbers, ratio staff: children, job descriptions, care and teaching staff
• Management: Education and Social Development roles
• A detailed description of care arrangements e.g. teachers being used to perform duties of Child and Youth Care Workers
• Brief description of the curriculum and other programmes
• Accessibility for learners e.g. ABET, academic, vocational
• Geographical location
• where do the children come from?
• distance between this facility and others
• what arrangements are in place for the placement of children from other provinces?

• Abscondment rate during the past year
• Identify the major blockages in the designation processes for the two facilities operating as Reform Schools

• Geographical access
• Suitability of buildings/ programmes and staff ratios
• Multi-purpose use of existing facilities.

1. SUMMARY OF FINDINGS

TOTAL NATIONAL CAPACITY:

1. Schools of Industries: 04 for Girls; 09 for Boys; 03 for Girls & Boys = Total 16

2. Reform Schools: 01 for Boys & Girls; 02 for Boys = Total 03

NOTE: * Bersig School, Utrecht in KwaZulu-Natal, catering for children of primary school-going age.

• * Denovo YC is the process of coming on line.

1. ANALYSIS OF CAPACITY IN RELATION TO ACCESS FOR

• A number of Schools of Industries in the 7 provinces that are without facilities for sentenced children either have vast tracts of land or additional capacity that can be operationalised if more financial or human resources become accessible.

• A few institutions in some provinces have demonstrated strengths and innovation by converting some of the criminal procedure processes prior to sentencing into children’s court inquiries. This then enabled them to place children in the much more available Schools of Industries. Northern Cape is using its 2 Secure Care Centers in Upington and Kimberly for such purposes. They base their cause of action on the understanding that a great number of children who end up in criminal courts, are basically children who have an "in need of care" profile.

The Northern Cape and Limpopo Provinces have no Schools of Industry

(and no Reform Schools either). They totally depend on other provinces for the

residential care and education of their children with Children’s Court Orders

requiring them to be placed in Schools of Industries.

4.1.3.2 Low Capacity Provinces:

The North-West and Eastern Cape Provinces have one (1) single sex School of

Industry each. J.J. Serfontein in Queenstown, Eastern Cape caters for boys only

and Daeraad in Wolmaraanstad, North-West caters for girls. This means that

girls in the Eastern Cape and boys in North-West are placed away from their

home provinces.

Western Cape has, for past historical reasons, always had the greatest

concentration of child and youth care facilities. The province embarked on a

major transformation of its child and youth care system. Part of that process

resulted in the terms, "Schools of Industry" and "Reform Schools" being

expunged from their child and youth care vocabulary.

5. Capacity In Terms of Beds and Physical Space in Schools of Industry:

Schools have their own quite unusual circumstances. For instance, over

• Bersig School in Utrecht, KwaZulu-Natal is a school of industries for primary school-going age children in the 7 – 12/13 years age range. Furthermore, some the learners enrolled there follow a special education curriculum for children living with mild disabilities. This raises interesting questions of whether this is a truly unique school of industry or some model of a "Full Service Primary School" as envisaged in Special Needs Education White Paper 6, on Inclusive Education.

• J.J. Luckhoff in Gauteng are sharing their educational facilities with 25 children from a Street Children’s Shelter based in Heidelberg.

• Issues of children In need of care and children In trouble With the law are not well understood in Education.

• EDUCATOR QUALIFICATIONS

• CURRICULUM PACKAGES:

• All schools offer OBE – Grade 1 to 9 as is the case in all community schools.
• A few schools offer a Formal Technical Education Stream leading to N1, N2, N3. (These are nationally recognized qualifications but the equipment, maintenance and minimum pass standards are high)
• Some schools offer a pre-selected Matric Syllabus with subjects like Languages (excluding African languages in most schools), Biology, Mathematics, Science, Accounting, Business Economics, etc. The number of available educators and subjects they are able to teach is the major determining factor on what subjects get selected in that particular school.

• This varies from the mainstream Vocational Training Course to various permutations going under different names such as, "Arts and Craft Course", "Entrepreneurial Class", "Workshops", "Skills Course", etc. It also matters whether the school is for boys or girls. Wonderful finished works were observed in some schools, worth a good price in the market.

Schalkwyk (The Education System) defines educational neglect as:-

" --- poor or wrong educational treatment or intervention by his educator, which

resulted in the child losing his sense of direction and purpose. He belongs to the

group of children whose formative education has gone so far wrong that a kind

of educational crisis has arisen because of educational deficits of a specific

nature, such as a lack of effective authoritative guidance, unsatisfactory

emotional relationships, little or no normative foundations, insufficient help and

support , little or no identification with a parent, and insecurity, fear and doubt,

etc." *

Interestingly, the educators at J.J. Serfontein School of Industries – a school

previously catering for White children but now serving all children – indicated that

educational neglect is not only confined to African children. Interviews in our

study clearly indicate that educational neglect is prevalent in all these schools.

The majority of educators who participated in this study ascribed this educational

neglect to:

• Children losing out on education due to extended periods spent living on the streets, in communities but out-of-school, at places of safety, secure care centers and juvenile correctional services (prison) without access to appropriate educational programmes. At times access has been there but constrained by poor human and material resources provision.

• The data gathered in this study also concurs with the assertion made by Schalkwyk (The Education System) where he states the main causes of educational neglect as "emotional deprivation of the child in his earliest years, a broken home, overprotection and spoiling of the child, rejections, parental discord, physical deficiencies, the bad example of parents and unsatisfactory relations with parents, brothers, sisters, playmates and others, the absence of authority and a poor future orientation."

• A commission specifically set up to investigate special needs in education also came to a similar conclusion to that of educators in this study. In its report it stated that, "the curriculum and education system as a whole have generally failed to respond to the diverse needs of the learner population, resulting in massive numbers of drop-outs, push-outs, and failures. " (the National Commission on Special Needs Education and Training and the National Committee on Education Support Services appointed by the Ministry of Education in October 1996)."

• Some schools use the Adult Basic Education Training (ABET) material

• Other schools have remedial education classes run by qualified remedial education teachers.
• There are schools that have found the Outcomes Based Education (OBE) curriculum, materials and methodology adequately enabling and adaptable for dealing with pre-existing educational deficits.
• It was also observed that some schools use the practice of assessing the child and then placing him/her in a lower grade (if his/her knowledge and skills are at that level) and then fast forward-track his/her promotion upwards in line with continuous assessment and progress.
• Yet other schools place the "less academically inclined" learners in the non-formal "hands on" education programmes where the theorectical component is drastically reduced. These similar courses are called by different names such, "Arts and Craft", "Entrepreneurial Class", "Workshops", "Skills Course", etc.
• All the schools have Lifestyle education programmes which also work towards addressing educational neglect. Materials handed out during Project Upgrade – a capacity building exercise that was undertaken across the country – were found to be in use.

4. TRANSFORMATION ISSUES:

• Schools which previously catered for white children have a physical infrastructure of a high standard. Rosenhof in Free State and J.J. Serfontein in the Eastern Cape are among good examples of this. When compared to Vikelwa and Ethokomala in Mpumalanga, a marked difference can be observed.
• The majority of educators in schools previously serving white children, are predominantly white. In fact there are two to three schools, now catering for a racially integrated learner population, where the entire teaching staff is white.
• Afrikaans is predominantly the language for medium of communication and instruction, followed by English.
• By far the majority of Principals are white males and even in schools for girls, males are still at the helm of power.

4. DEVELOPMENTAL, THERAPEUTIC and CARE PROGRAMMES:

The greatest majority of educators and school managers interviewed openly

stated that they were struggling with finding positive behaviour management

techniques that can be applied effectively by all staff members in these

facilties. The abolition of the use of corporal punishment, prohibition of

behaviour management measures such as isolation cells and wholesale points

rewarding system without equipping the educators and care staff with alternative

methods has left a void that feeds perceptions of helplessness.

Institutions are dealing with this matter in best way they can. In a number of

cases the Deputy Principals, Principals and the few psychologists (where they

can be found) have been designated the roles of "disciplinarians", "fire-fighters",

and "trouble shooters". One psychologist bemoaned the fact that he was called

upon to do so much crises management that he could not find time anymore to

do his normal developmental psychology work.

One Reform School, which actually represents the last line of intervention in the

entire child care system, felt so out of depth in managing the behaviour of three

children that it decided to release all them for the following reasons, "His

a danger to his inmates as well as the adults in the school." So, if the most

restrictive residential child and youth care setting, can feel and act as happened

in this true case study, it is clear that behaviour management is a serious challenge for all institutions.

Re-integration work is at a very low level. Social workers working with the

families of children who have been place in residential care are so few and

overloaded with the result that there is a very poor communication and lack of co-

operation with institutions where children are placed. This is further exacerbated

by the cross-provincial placements.

Besides the obvious one of certain provinces having no facilities while some

Are enjoying an abundance, another inequality has been observed. It is:-

• Budgets:

• One of the reasons why some provinces could not place their children in the Western Cape schools was the Western Cape’s Cabinet decision which requires every child who comes from outside that province to be accompanied by a care budget. Quite a number of provinces had not budgeted anything for the care of children in need of care simply because they did not have physical facilities.

It is recommended that all Reform Schools be de-classified as public schools and be transformed into Youth Secure Care and Education Centers with the required capacity to provide a secure, therapeutic and developmental milieu wherein young people with severe emotional, behavioural and/or psycho-social problems will be protected, educated and cared for.

It is further recommended that an Inter-Departmental Meeting of concerned National and Provincial Departments (including the Principals of the existing Reform Schools) be convened immediately. After all pertinent issues have been discussed, the meeting would then take strategic decisions on those matters that are

critical to the implementation of this recommendation such as:

• Which Ministry or Department is, in terms of competency and resources, best suited to manage Youth Secure Care and Education Centers?;
• What concrete steps should be taken to ensure that the 7 Provinces without such institutions do get access for their children to them in the shortest space of time ?
• What are the specific roles of concerned Departments in so far as the protection, education and care of young people in Youth Secure Care and Education Centers at pre-admission, in care and post-release stages;
• What are the specific roles of National and Provincial Departments in the provision and management of such facilities ?
• What legislative, policy and administrative implications will be necessitated by this change and how will they be managed?

1. .2 Transformation of Schools of Industry

• Advise, co-ordinate and render practical support to the National Ministry and Provincial Heads of Education on:

1. The management of qualitative and quantitative research that will inform national and provincial policy development, curriculum and educational materials design, appropriate management structures and approaches,

human resources development practices and other pertinent matters.

The design and implementation of a sector-specific Quality Assurance

Toolkit that combines the principles and practices of the Developmental