Institute for Health and
Development Communication
Reg. No. 95/10944/08
(Association Incorporated Under Section 21)
6
May 2007
Submission By:
Soul City Institute for Health and
Development Communication
Submission on
May 2007
The Soul City Institute for
Health and Development Communication (Soul City IHDC) is a social change
project and health promotion organization, which believes that health, is a product
of a range of intersectoral actions that include building an enabling
environment, advocacy for health public policy, community action, developing
personal skills and reorienting the health services towards the health
promotion approach.
The Institute’s flagship TV
and radio programmes,
It is not easy to separate
health and social issues as they are inter-dependent.
For several years now Soul City IHDC has
committed its resources to advocating and mobilizing around a campaign to
promote Schools as Nodes of Care & Support for Vulnerable Children.
The Campaign aims to engage parents - through School Governing Bodies - in
increasing their roles in the provision of support to children made vulnerable
by a range of factors, from HIV/AIDS and poverty to violence and who are at
school.
Soul City IHDC is grateful for the
opportunity to comment on the Education Laws Amendment Bill, 2007 and believes
that the research and campaigns it has been involved in since its inception
qualify it to make informed comments and recommendations on certain clauses
within the Bill.
2. Context
Although we understand and appreciate the
need to address the high levels of crime at school and the concomitant drug
issues, we believe that certain sections of the Bill fail to achieve a
satisfying and child-rights based approach to the problems. Further it is our
contention that in some instances, certain parts of the Bill could cause
unnecessary stress and marginalization within communities, particularly poorer
ones.
The content of any Bill, which purports to
address violence and drug problems in schools must, we believe, take the
following into account:
a) The
wider context of violence within our communities and society in general;[1]
b) The endemic socio-political violence
perpetrated by continuing national, race, class and gender inequality through
poverty, lack of access to basic services and opportunities, and other material
and human deprivations defined by such inequalities; and
c) The
wider context of child vulnerability created by these inequalities and
experienced through the impact of HIV/AIDS on children and their households,
poverty, domestic violence, xenophobia, and all forms of social disintegration
- all of which impact on the ability of vulnerable children to obtain access to
a safe and effective learning environment in which to realise their right to
basic education.
The problem of School-Based Violence has been widely
documented, but remains largely unquantified, and many questions remain to be
answered about the nature, causes and impacts upon learners.
Soul City IHDC's submission situates the
crisis of School-Based Violence in a wider context of social disintegration
that is part of the legacy of apartheid, but which is also maintained by
current inequalities.
Soul City's longer-term vision centrally
calls for efforts to reinvigorate the Tirisano Call to Action with a
particular emphasis on the creation of Schools as Centers of Community Life
and centre state commitments to cooperative governance in all matters related
to the realization of the fundamental rights of children around this model,
with the creation of Schools as Nodes of Care and Support for Vulnerable
Children serving as a first step toward the realization of this
vision. Further and equally important,
we call for the release of the “Report of the Ministerial Review Committee on
School Governance, 2004 as well as the implementation of its recommendation. School governance, like curriculum, is a key
arena for determining the character of a school, particularly its climate and
ethos and conditions under which learning and teaching take place.[2]
3.
This submission takes as its
starting point, and should be read in conjunction with, the Soul City IHDC
submission to the South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) Inquiry into
School-Based Violence in
This specific
campaign focus on the links between health and development, and in particular Soul
Buddyz' Clubs[3] work around the
health and development of children, has led to the recognition that many of our
nation's children - including, but not limited to those infected and affected by
HIV and AIDS - are rendered vulnerable by a range of socio-economic factors,
from the loss of parents or guardians (orphans), to domestic and other forms of
violence, poverty, lack of access to basic nutrition and services, as well as
lack of access to various government services intended to assist them.
Soul City IHDC's
analysis of the social and institutional framework within which vulnerable
children must struggle to survive and grow has led us to focus on the school
community as the most viable location for the much-needed coordination and
delivery of various forms of state, civil society, and private sector
assistance to address the particular needs of vulnerable children.
The Campaign aims
to foster a multi-sectoral approach to identifying and addressing the needs of
vulnerable children within the school environment.
The Bill is one
part of plan to address school security through a number of measures including
identifying "problem schools" requiring immediate attention,
increasing provisions for school security infrastructure, such as walls,
fences, and closed circuit cameras, and investigate the legislative process for
random searches of learners for drugs and weapons[4].
These plans -
approved by the Council of Education Ministers - are seen as way to “inculcate
a culture of safety". In the context of the "balance of rights[5]"
question, it is important to consider the immediate, as well as long-term,
social implications of a plan to address a generalised, and historically and
structurally-embedded, problem of violence by segregating our schools from the
communities within which they - and their learners - reside, and by exposing
young learners to a security-based learning environment.
While reference
has been made to drawing on the experiences of other countries, such as the
Apart from the
indignity of being searched - an experience that easily conjured the sense of
being held to be guilty until proven innocent (harking quickly to a stereotype
of poor, black criminality that is inexorably tied to South Africa's racist
past), learners lived experiences would move from one in which the violence
they experience in schools reflects the violent world in which they live to one
in which the violence of poverty is directly replicated, through the
organisation of the learning environment, by the school in which they struggle
against many other vulnerabilities to realise their right to basic education.
The security-based approach to School-Based Violence may have longer term and
unanticipated psychosocial consequences for the current generation of learners.
The seeds of an alternative
to the security-based approach were already planted when the DoE issued it's "Call
to Action: Mobilising Citizens to Build a South African Education and Training
System for the 21st Century", otherwise known as the Tirisano Plan.
The then Minister of Education Kader Asmal called on educationists and other key
stakeholders in the field of education to "work together" to address
the crisis in the South African basic education sector, which he likened to a
'State of Emergency'. Tirisano's plan relied upon nine key aims, including,
perhaps most importantly, the vision that "Schools must become centres of community life".
The "Schools as Nodes
of Care and Support for Vulnerable Children", or "Caring
Schools", campaign, draws on - and in some cases seeks to strengthen -
a range of existing enabling legislation, both within the DoE, and across other
sectors of government, and aims to facilitate the most comprehensive and
effective implementation of the State's obligations to children by situating
schools as centres for government delivery, and as places where other forms of
care can be mobilised from within and across the local community. This approach has several advantages,
including:
·
Avoiding the
growing tendency to throw new policy and legislation at every problem,
resulting in policy fatigue, implementer confusion, and the diffusion of
capacity and resources, by working largely within existing policy and
legislative frameworks;
·
Assisting in the
creation of tangible forms of cooperative governance between different tiers
and sectors of government with delivery obligations to our nation's children
(e.g. Department of Social Development's delivery of Child Grants; Department
of Health's delivery of HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment programmes, food
parcels, and other services; Department of Home Affair's delivery of identity
documents).
·
Drawing upon -
and mobilising - the existing social resources within the community, including
the internal school community of learners, educators and parents, as well as
the surrounding community, including local civil society organisations,
churches, non-school-based skills, as well as private sector organisations and
individuals, in a new space where mutual participation and creative local
visioning offers the potential to begin the process of social re-integration of
our communities.
The "Schools as Nodes
of Care and Support for Vulnerable Children" campaign also begins from
the recognition that the capacity and resources of schools and school educators
are alone insufficient to comprehensively address the challenges of social re-integration
and care for vulnerable children. It
therefore sets its sights on one of the most plentiful but least-tapped human
resources of the school community - the parents. Recent debates about the different approaches
to redefining the role and responsibilities of School Governing Bodies have
centred largely on the relative power dynamic between SGBs, school management
and the DoE. The Soul City IHDC approach sets out to define a far more central
role for SGBs in a terrain that currently lacks focused capacity - the role of
identifying and supporting vulnerable children to obtain access to the
resources they need most - whether through state programmes or other creative
local solutions - to enable them to fully realize their fundamental right to a
safe and effective learning environment and a quality basic education.
Most importantly, however, by
identifying the school as the locus of community participation and support -
rather than as a prison-industrial-complex-style walled island separated from
the community by barbed wire – the campaign seeks to mobilise and inspire the
participatory generation of local solutions to local problems. By opening
genuine space for the creation of local solution to, for example, the problem
of School-Based Violence, we may see very different approaches that
instinctively integrate solutions to wider Community-Based Violence emerging
from members of the community who are sufficiently informed of the sources of
their local violence.
Finally, the school
community-based approach advocated by Soul City IHDC builds fundamentally upon
the Children’s Rights Convention(CRC) principle that not only the 'best
interests', but also the views of children must be taken into account in all
matters by which they affected.
If we can have
posters and placards that invite the people to a meeting
in a hall and then
in that meeting we nominate one child who is going
to speak on behalf
of the children. Another for the youth and another
for the adults and
then a child will explain what kind of violence or
abuse that their
parents are doing to them and now there is no
pressure for them
trying to explain, why? How can we do away with the
abuse that we have
amongst our area and a campaign, a campaign
similar to the
campaign already done and to do an appeal you know to
everybody about the
safety of us and why they are doing these things.
Actually we are
young and how can we prevent that you know.
(Girl,
The above example
demonstrates two critical points: that children can engage with the problems of
violence affecting them, and do so from a position that seeks to advance the
interests of the community; and secondly, that engagement in community groups
may play a role in facilitating this level of creative agency among children
who experience violence, and whose sense of agency is most at-risk as a result.
·
Launch
a national awareness-raising campaign around School-Based Violence,
Gender-Based Violence and all Violence Against Children, as well as Gun-Free
Schools campaigns, which locates the current patterns of violence within the
historical and socio-political legacy that our national transformation project
seeks to relegate to the past, and which advocates for community-wide involvement
in the creation of safe communities and learning environments for all children,
and for girl-children in particular.[6]
·
Convene
a series of participatory Multi-Stakeholder Dialogues at national, provincial
and local levels to thoroughly engage with the short and long-term consequences
of the different approaches to the problem of School-Based Violence and School
Community social integration challenges more broadly, and to identify the best
ways to create an enabling environment for schools to play a role in the
creation of safe and socially integrated communities.
·
Create
a register of governmental, civil society and private sector initiatives and
resources available to address the problems of Violence Against Children and
other forms of child vulnerability to facilitate access to resources and models
by local school communities.
·
Reinvigorate
the Tirisano Call to Action with a particular emphasis on the creation
of schools as centers of community life, and centre state commitments to
cooperative governance in all matters related to the realization of the
fundamental rights of children around this model, with the creation of Schools
as Nodes of Care and Support for Vulnerable Children serving as a first
step toward the creation of Schools as Centers of Community Life.
Provincial
MECs are Picking up the Baton
KwaZulu Natal Education MEC, Ina Cronje recently spoke at a mass prayer
meeting after a particularly gruelling first term of violence in which pupils
and teachers were killed injured and raped in that province. The event also marked the handing over of a torch of
peace from the
She said: "We can erect
fences and we must, I am not for a moment suggesting that our schools should
not be securely fenced, but the perpetrators of violence and crimes in our
schools are us.
"It is our people, our
children and our neighbours who are doing these things and unless we change the
hearts of our people these things will continue. An evil heart cannot be kept out by a fence”.
Cronje called on religious
leaders to play a role in changing people's hearts. "There are nine
million of us in this province. If everyone says, as small as I am, I am
willing to do my bit; a mighty voice will go out." She said that if communities did not offer
support to teachers and pupils then "we as a province would perish".
Earlier, when Eastern Cape
MEC Mokgato handed the torch to Cronje he said that the focus of schools had
shifted from educating pupils to other issues.
"Today we talk about teenage pregnancy, gunfights, and killings in
our schools and not issues relating to education”.
He called on individuals to
step forward and help "restore schools as centres of excellence.[7]
7 COMMENTS
ON SPECIFIC SECTIONS
Point 3 - Changes to Section 1 of the South
African Schools Act
3.1 Definition of dangerous object
Although we understand that learners have turned objects such as chair legs into weapons, the definition suggested still seems unnecessarily wide and could in fact include ordinary sports equipment.
3.2 Definition of an illegal drug
Reference to other legislation may enhance this rather ad hoc definition.
Recommendation:
Insert the definition from Draft Policy Framework
for the Management of Drug Abuse by Learners in Schools[8]:
“drug is used
generically to include tobacco and herbal cigarettes, alcohol pharmaceutical
drugs (prescribed and over the counter), illicit drugs, image and performance
enhancing substances and inhalants and other volatile substances”
3.3 Definition
of ‘random’
The dictionary meaning of the word ‘random’ is: lacking any definite plan or prearranged order; haphazard.
The Bill’s definition says it means “the identification of a learner or a randomly selected group or a particular grade of learners who are reasonably suspected of illegal conduct”.
If these learners are suspected of conduct, they have been identified. They are certainly not random. It is in total contradiction to the usual meaning of the word.
This also does not reflect
Recommendation:
An examination of school drug testing policies elsewhere reflects that doing random testing is exactly that: testing randomly selected pupils. We would like to recommend that the same understanding should be followed in relation to searches and seizures.
Human Rights Commissioner Charlotte McLain says in One abuse can lead to another[9]: “None of the drug-testing policies that the SAHRC has examined advocated testing learners based on reasonable suspicion. They are selected from an alphabetical class list on a statistically random basis.”
We recommend that the definition be changed to reflect the true meaning of the word random and its understood meaning in terms of random selection.
The definition should incorproate “……..if there is reasonable suspicion that one
or more individuals in the group possesses drugs”
The Draft Policy Framework for the Management of Drug Abuse by Learners in Schools defines it thus and this is also preferable:
Picking people at random to be tested for the presence of drugs in
the body.
Point 4 - Insertion 5 A (1)
This insertion is to be welcomed. However norms and
standards should not only relate to basic infrastructure and capacity in
schools. It should go beyond the physical environment and make provision for
care and support of vulnerable learners to ensure that core objective of
education is realized. This is in line with a number of declarations
Currently in revision, the DoE’s Draft Health and Wellness Framework attempts to make this a reality. Reference is made to how social and mental issues such as violence, trauma, bullying, suicide, injury, gender violence as well as life-style behaviour such as drug and substance abuse and other risk taking behaviour, impair physical and cognitive development of learners; are causes of absenteeism; increase the number of out of school youth; pose barriers to learning and affects the participation of learners and educators in the teaching and learning processes.
Section 5[10] of the framework talks to the issue of The Healthy Learner which is more than just the physical condition: A learner who is healthy and well is one who strives to attain self actualization, build healthy relations and adapt to the school environment and its challenges and lead a healthy lifestyle. Self-actualization is seen as the ability of the learner to make responsible and sound decision with respect to inter alia alcohol, and substance use and abuse. Building healthy relations effectively involves the ability to identify and cope with challenges in different settings: e.g. family structure (divorced parents, single parents and child-headed households) school environment (gangs, bullying, violence and peer pressure) and community (sexual, mental and physical abuse).
A healthy lifestyle is the ability of the learner to promote, maintain and take responsibility for inter alia one’s health, physical activity, good nutrition, avoiding substance abuse. The document acknowledges that the provision of health services is the mandate of the DoH but says ALL departments in general and education in particular also have a role and responsibility in delivering and supporting promotive and preventative interventions that will influence communities’ future health status. The School governing Bodies must also establish a Health Advisory Sub-Committee. Although this is mainly in the context of HIV and Aids Policy, all members of the SGB (including learner representatives) must be capacitated, participate and contribute to school-based health and wellness programmes. Importantly both learners and educators must be encouraged to resolve conflict through non-violent means.[11]
Recommendation:
1. Expand
on 5A (1) in the following way:
“The minister must prescribe by regulation minimum norms and standards to
ensure equitable education across the board with specific reference to:
2. Insert a
new clause point 5A (1)
(d) care and support for
vulnerable children
3. Insert in
clause 5A (2)
Fulfillment of obligations in
terms of DoE’s Health and Wellness Framework
Point 5 - Random Search and Seizure and Drug Testing at School
Clause 8A
This clause is problematic and could
compromise the rights and dignity of learners.
Our earlier objection to the definition of the word “random”
refers. Further, we’d like to recommend
that this section be clarified and improved in relation to the intended purpose
and reasons of the search and seizure.
The power to do routine and random searches and drug
tests must be subjected to requirements of reasonableness, but should not be
done on reasonable suspicion.
Reasonableness must require that the school must have a persistent
problem which they can't solve with the usual criminal law, which requires
"reasonable suspicion". In a school that can't prove an endemic
problem, they should not have such searches.
·
8A (2) (a)
Talks about the
best interest of the learner or any other learner but does not provide further
details on how the best interests of the learner will be realized. This is
notwithstanding the mention of the code of conduct and its contents in [8A
(13)].
Recommendation:
That
the Department of Education be obliged by legislation to establish and maintain
a system for the identification, referral and support of vulnerable children
Schools have several comparative advantages over other services when it
comes to reaching potentially vulnerable children. Notable of these include the
fact that schools exist in large numbers, are often more accessible than other
services and large numbers of children spend many hours of their lives in
school. Currently legislation mandates principals and teachers to identify and
refer children who are abused and/or neglected.
Soul City recommends that this is taken further and expanded, by way of
a new clause 8A (12) (a) and that the MEC for Education is given the
responsibility to establish and maintain for all schools in the province a
system of identification, referral and support for vulnerable children. For
this to be effective, provision will need to be made for the appointment and
funding of social service professionals and other support personnel within
schools.
·
8 A (3)
This section introduces the words ‘body
search’. 8A (1) & (2) do not mention that the searches will be body
searches. The clause compromises educators by turning them into police officers
thereby confusing their roles and usurping the duties of the police. Trust
between learner and educator is critical.
We refer too to
earlier comments in this submission (see Scenario
2 above) in which we talk
of
the indignity of being searched and how
certain sectors of disadvantaged communities, particularly the poor and
underprivileged, feel humiliated and discriminated against during such
searches.
Further more, notwithstanding
the fact that the search must be conducted by a person of the same sex; the
possibility of abuse by teachers cannot be ruled out. On the other side of the
coin, it also lays open the possibility of educators themselves being wrongly
accused of molesting a learner.
Of concern too is what type of search,
that is what the drafters mean by a “body search”. We reject totally a body
cavity search – used sometimes to humiliate and harass. We hope it is not the intention of the
legislation to introduce invasive body searches which could contravene the
rights to bodily integrity. We recommend
that the legislation be specific and make provisions for tap down searches
only. And that where strip searches are
justified that such cases fall outside the educational framework and as such,
require the involvement of parents and the police services.
Clauses 8A(4) & (5) have many legal implications and
place various burdens on the staff of the school especially in regard to the
collection of what might in the future be construed as evidence. This and other
duties imposed on educators in this clause require them to add additional
duties to their already heavy workload.
Recommendations:
1.
Jody Kollapen, Chair of the Human Rights Commission, in a
statement after the Commission’s inquiry into school-based-violence, said it
was simply unacceptable to expect teachers to take over safety responsibilities
at schools and suggested that suitably trained safety officers may be the
answer.[12]
Although this may be what is envisaged in the wording “principal’s delegate” it
should be more specific in terms of who would qualify to be the delegate and
that it would preferably not be a member of the teaching staff.
2.
We, however, reject the idea that ‘safety officers’ equal
‘security guards’ for a number of reasons. One is that security guards are not
viewed with respect by many and the majority of them have minimal
qualifications. Safety officers would need to be trained to fulfil the
appropriate role.
3.
Remove the word ‘body search’ or be more explicit by setting
out what will be an acceptable body search.
4.
Drug Testing
Clause 8A (8)
Although Soul City IHDC does not reject the principle of
random drug testing at schools out of hand we do believe the following should
be noted:
·
Drug testing can end up being costly. Both in terms of the
cost of the equipment and the human resources used in training staff,
supervising testing, recording results and following up tests etc. We need to
question whether the DoE will provide provinces with budgets for these
tests. Cost benefit analyses point to
the fact that introducing drug testing can cost the same as bringing in a
counsellor to deal with these specific problems.[13]
If policy leaves it open to each
school, the divide between rich and poor schools battling with the same problem
will result in the richer and better resourced schools being able to afford the
test kits while schools on the other end of the scale, will be unable to carry
out the policy effectively. Because of this, drug testing may not give effect
to the Council of Education Minister’s decision to increase the capacity of
educational institutions to manage drug abuse by learners on a nationally
consistent basis.
·
Not all tests cost the same and not all tests are able to
test for all drugs. Urine tests often do not detect alcohol or tobacco.
Marijuana stays in the body longer than other drugs, drugs like cocaine, heroin
and methamphetamine often go undetected.[14]
The urine test is seen as being invasive and embarrassing.
·
Drug testing in schools is controversial. In the
There is no empirical evidence or
justification for routine random testing of learners, to detect substance use.
If a drug test is considered necessary, it should form part of a structured
intervention or relapse programme, and be carried out according to school
policy, medical/treatment and ethical procedures.
Once again we assert that testing of
this nature is not a solution. More strategic interventions should be explored.
Research has shown that regardless of discipline and positive role-models
children are inclined to experiment with drugs. This does not necessarily mean
a permanent addiction but one that can be shrugged off. Drug testing could
result in being labelled thereby encouraging a pupil to go down a road that
would not have been his/her choice if left alone to reach his/her own
conclusions It has also been noted that learners sometimes turn to more
dangerous drugs that are less detectable – a highly undesirable consequence.
·
NAADAC The Association for Addiction Practitioners in the US
questions the benefits of efficacy of school drug testing: “The challenges are
manifold in determining whom to test, what to test for, what safeguards there
are against false-testing processes, how the privacy of a student’s health
status is protected, and whether drop-out rates would soar as a result of this
testing…..NAADAC feels strongly that if a community does adopt a school drug
testing program, stakeholders should first ensure that sufficient resources are
available to address students who test positive.”
·
As we have seen in
·
Apart from policing roles, educators will, if this section
becomes law, have to become health workers as well. For testing of this nature
should be left to the health workers and not to educators. If testing is to
undertaken it should be done as a combined effort between the health and
education sector.
·
The new clause and approach has a punitive objective instead
of a rehabilitative one. The draft policy framework states clearly that
a purely punitive approach can only produce part of the solution and “in
recognition of health and social underpinnings of drug abuse and dependency, it
is the Minister’s intention not to condemn learners but to ensure that
provincial education department support those who require help for drug related
problems”.
It appears that welfare of the
learner is not central to the legislation as the draft policy document
recommended. It is only in Subsection (13), the last addition, support
and counselling is considered. It is our contention that this should be the
initial response even before resorting to search and seizures and drug testing.
Too little effort goes into this service and other rehabilitative measures.
·
The policy document also expounds the need to give effect to
the constitution in terms of the right to education, not to be fairly
discriminated against, to life, to privacy and most importantly bodily and
psychological integrity.
·
Although (8) does not mention the word random, (9) does
therefore we must assume the problems associated with the definition will once
more be relevant. What constitutes a random test? Should deciding when and whom
to test be more clearly defined? Should it be on suspicion thereby making it
less random[15]
8A (9) Informing the parents
If testing or search and seizure
were truly random, it would be unnecessary to inform parents when testing had
taken place.
If one particular learner was
targeted and came back positive from a test, consideration needs to be given to
whether or not it is in the interests of the learner to inform his or her
parents. Firstly it is not impossible that the test could be faulty. The school
could also lay itself open to charges of contravening the pupil’s right to
privacy and not to be discriminated against.
In addition, if the learner is
manifesting anti-social behaviour, counselling and intervention should pre-empt
search and seizure or drug testing.
Clause 8A (12)
Recommendation:
We
would recommend a new clause be added to cover the recommendations above and
which reads as follows:
Clause 8A
(12) (a)
The MEC of Education in each province must establish
and maintain for all schools in the province, a system for the identification,
referral and support for vulnerable children.
(1) In
developing the system, the MEC, in order to give effect to section 5 of this
Act, must consult with the MEC for Social Development, the MEC for Health and
other organs of state providing social services to vulnerable children.
(2) The
system must be structured in a way which ensures:
(a) the
delivery of social services to vulnerable children in an integrated and
co-ordinated manner
(b)
provision for the appointment and funding of social service professionals and
para-professionals and other support personnel, within the education system, to
provide social services to vulnerable children and to link children with
appropriate social service providers.
(3) The
MEC must ensure that the systems established in terms of this section are
monitored to ensure the delivery of services.
Point 7 Functions and responsibilities of principal
Clause 21A (6): Although the principal sits on the SGB representing
the Department, it is unreasonable to set down in law that he/she cannot give
evidence against his superiors. The principal concerned may well have no option
both in terms of his/her conscience as well as the law.
[1] Examining press reports on violence it emerges that although violence is happening at schools, it is the association with education that sometimes conveys the information that the report is about school-based- violence. Teachers are murdered; not at school but it becomes school violence. A principal is arrested for involvement in the murder; its school violence. A pupil is the victim of a taxi violence feud while sitting in a classroom because a bullet came through the window. And so on: reflecting that in fact more often than not the violence is actually located in the community.
[2]
Report of the Ministerial Review Committee on School Governance, 2004
[3] The Soul Buddyz Club is a groundbreaking way of reaching children and helping them to take action in their own lives and communities. Soul Buddyz Club is the platform where children are exposed to positive peer interaction, information about their health and rights, fun and adventure to stimulate their growing minds and practical opportunities to develop leadership skills. Since the inception the of the Soul Buddyz Club project over 3 years ago, more than 2000 primary schools and libraries have become affiliates of the Soul Buddyz Club project with a noteworthy number of these moving on to establish functional Soul Buddyz Clubs. Thousands of children have joined the Soul Buddyz Club children’s movement and have, through many innovative ways reported tremendous gains.
[4] "School security to
be beefed up, says Pandor", Sapa, 5 June, 2006, in Independent Online.
[5]
In its Inquiry into School Based Violence in