Background
South African schools are facing many problems nowadays. These are the main ones.

Violence
Incidents of various forms of violence have become increasingly common within both secondary and primary schools. According to an audit conducted by the Centre for Justice and Crime Prevention in each school there is a median of 12 incidents of violence per year (the mean is at 28 incidents). Violence can be in terms of verbal abuse, physical violence and sexual abuse. The seven schools reporting the highest levels of violence are all located within the Northern Cape Province (but it is also one of the provinces that record incidents more). Moreover 50.8% of schools reported between one and ten incidents of bullying or teasing in a year, 16.5% between 11 and 20 and 9.8% reported an excess of 21 incidents, while just the remaining 22.7% reported no incidents. There are also episodes of violence perpetrated by learners against educators (mean of 3.3 per year per school) and, to a lower extent, vice versa (mean of 3). “Love relationships” between learners and educators are becoming worryingly common. At some levels, corporal punishment still continues.

Causes:

1. Security: just 32.3% of schools have security guards and 33.8% do not have secure controlled access. In some schools there are noticeable holes in the fences allowing people to come in and out. In total, just 43.7% of schools have security fencing. Learners reported that classmates bring weapons to school also to protect themselves from other outside the school. The area outside the school gate is a site of danger and the most commonly unsafe areas inside schools are toilets and stair wells.
2. Shortage of personnel: having an educator monitoring the toilet area during all break periods would alleviate both the danger and learners' fear, but they don't have the capacity to do that.
3. Weapons: 55.2% of schools principals reported between one and ten incidents per year of learners using weapons. It is too easy for children to access firearms.
4. Drinks and drug: 59.4% of schools principals argued that from one to ten incidents per year involve the use of drugs or alcohol. Taverns very close to schools sell liquor to learners in full school uniform. The problem is also linked to educators, as at no less than eight schools in three provinces the learners reported cases of educators sending learners out of school to buy alcohol for them.
5. Scarcity of social workers, educational psychologist and other support services.
6. Lack of discipline provided by parents and lack of positive role models.
7. High ratios of educators to learners.
8. Gangs: learners join gangs.

Financing
School governing bodies have the responsibility of managing finances at school. Schools are allowed to raise funds over and above the departmental allocations. However, most of these school governors lack the necessary financial knowledge, skills and competencies required to effectively manage large sums of cash and, as a result, many schools experience financial difficulty. This is enhanced by the fact that the proportional funding on the basis of the financial status of schools and learners, introduced last year by the government, has worsened the plight of millions of schools. About 14 000 schools have been classified as “no-fee” institutions and receive the highest funding, but many poor schools are erroneously excluded from the protection.

Teacher Shortage
South Africa needs to produce 30 000 teachers per year over the next 10-15 years to meet demands, but each year the training system is producing at best a third of the required number. This data takes into consideration also the impact of HIV/AIDS that could result in a shortage of teachers. There are currently about 3 000 student teachers in SA but there should be 17 000. In particular there is a short supply of Math and Science teachers.

Proposed areas of intervention

The final goal is enhancing school security. This can only be achieved putting together efforts in improving infrastructure and increasing the security staff, increasing the number of teachers, improving the management of schools financial resources and developing a deeper relationship with community bodies.

The existence of good infrastructure is not in itself sufficient to make schools safer; but the idea of making schools safer without basic infrastructure is untenable. With this in mind, the first step in improving SA schools must be building a fence and/or a secured access for those that don't have it. Targeted interventions designed to meet the specific needs of identified schools are needed.

In order to enhance security, increasing the security staff could be also an important initiative. This would enable to monitor the unsafe areas of the schools during the breaks.

A valuable project for increasing the number of teachers is the School-based Teacher Education & Training. Student teachers would be attached to the staff of a school to be trained “on the job” through doing and observing lessons. This would increase the capacity of universities to train enough teachers to meet the needs of the Country. Even from their first year, student teachers could help learners studying in the afternoons. It is of particular relevance because school principals reported that it is during free time that learners are most likely to fall victim to violence or crime. The estimated cost per student teacher could be between R15 000 and R30 000 per year. The proposed ratio is 1 student teacher to 200 learners.

Improving the management of financial resources could be beneficial for whatever project. This could be achieved teaching the members of the school governing bodies the ways to effectively manage large sums of cash. It can be done by linking schools up with governing body federations by sponsoring the membership fees. An example of membership fees, for one of the governing body federations, in 2009 will be R1 600 per annum for schools with fewer than 900 learners and R1 950 for schools with 901 and over learners. Schools that have not been members before will be required to pay a R350 once off joining fee plus the annual membership fee.

Evidence shows that the area around the school is often source of dangers. Parents, the police and the whole community must collaborate to eliminate such threats. Taverns don't have to sell alcohol to learners, nobody has to sell drugs close to schools and so on. The solution could be organizing workshops and conferences for the community asking for its support in making school a safe place.

In the end, it is fundamental to implement in each school a formal mechanism of reporting to the Department of Education. This would allow a better monitoring of the situation and the identification of the real needs of each school.

For further information and to receive a questionnaire to determaine your area of invervention: contact Gabi +27 11 312 3040 or by mail gabi@ita.org.za

Instilling confidence
According to the department, the overall aim of accreditation is to instil confidence in entities that subject themselves to empowerment verification, and establish a measurement of excellence against which agencies should strive, in terms of compliance with empowerment criteria. DTI empowerment chief director Nomonde Mesatywa added that the awarding of certificates was a milestone in the evolution of BEE, as 11 companies were part of the first group of verification agencies to have fulfilled all the accreditation requirements.

Empowerment accreditation status
The agencies that have acquired empowerment accreditation status are: BEE Empowered, BEE Matrix, BEE Verification Agency, DRGSiyaya, Emex Trust, Empowerdex, Empwerlogic, Honeycomb, National Empowerment Rating Agency (Nera) Gauteng, Nera KwaZulu-Natal, and Nera Western Cape. "We congratulate those companies and trust that this will give credence to the verification process," Mesatywa said. "This represents the beginning of a phase in empowerment that will be marked by credibility, reliability, impartiality and the harmonisation of policies, procedures, guidelines, and standards, thus creating a credible and regulated environment for measuring, monitoring and evaluating broad-based empowerment."

She added that this was an ongoing process, which would be refined in order to ensure that accreditation of other agencies was expedited.

Equal opportunity
Emex trustee Mella Msiza said her company had leant a great deal from the process as a BEE scorecard and supplier verification agency: "As a new company, we are excited that we were afforded an equal opportunity to acquire skills that would enable us to make a livelihood and also empower our communities, by transferring this skill to them. "And we are now more competitive, as opposed to when we started – we now meet the standards set by the South African National Accreditation System."