'Culture of bullying' found within Milnerton High School

The Chairpersons of  Parliament’s Social Services Cluster oversight committees stated that they discovered a culture of bullying at Milnerton High School, following their oversight visit to the school last week.

The visit follows the assault of a 16-year-old grade 10 pupil by several other boys, in a video that subsequently went viral. Six pupils were charged with assault in the Cape Town Magistrate’s court on Thursday and released on R2,000 bail. 

During the media briefing on Monday, Chairperson of the Portfolio Committee on Education, Joy Maimela, said bullying undermines the safety, dignity, and mental health of many learners.

“The committee has been deeply concerned by the rising number of reported incidents in our schools, including physical, verbal, psychological and cyber bullying. Education cannot thrive in an environment of fear, and a learner who feels unsafe cannot learn while a teacher who fears discipline cannot teach effectively.”

Chairperson of the Select Committee on Education, Sciences & Creative Industries, Makhi Feni, said that their view is that the incident at the school “is a continuation of racist acts that continue in our schools, especially in those schools that were regarded as Model C schools”.

“We know the instances in Pretoria high schools and now this one, we are urging the department here in the Western Cape, because if nothing is taken to address this, we are fearing an uncontrollable situation in our country,” Feni said.

“It can’t be treated as mere bullying. We need to go beyond that particular situation.”

Maimela said they’ve engaged with the schools, district, and the Western Cape Education Department (WCED) on what actions are in place to ensure that such an “horrific incident” never happens again.

“What we have noted is that a majority of our schools do not have a comprehensive anti-bullying policy. What they do have is a code of conduct which just touches on the issue, but it is not a comprehensive policy. It does not give learners an understanding of what they should do when such instances happen or when they are affected by bullying.

“As a result, we have directed the department to assist all our schools, so that there are comprehensive anti-bullying policies and create reporting mechanisms that include learners being able to anonymously report incidents of bullying.”

Maimela said that their oversight will continue to ensure that safety measures are enforced. She added that they were concerned by the lack of psycho-social support that was made available following the Milnerton incident. 

“We learned while we were there that the learners and their parents had not received adequate psycho-social support. The WCED said that they did, but we then learned that it was not adequate psycho-social support, and that might be due to the fact that one social worker is attached to 30 schools. 

“The schools have to apply to the district, and they have to wait to get a social worker to assist learners with psycho-social support, that is one of the concerns we have raised with the department, to say that we need to come up with a strategy to ensure that there are school counsellors at every school.”

Maimela explained that they were given an assurance a disciplinary hearing had been held on Saturday, and that the province and the district would send them a full report on the outcomes of that hearing.

After that hearing, whatever the sanctions and the decision made by the school’s disciplinary committee, will still have to be taken to the district and the province for final approval as per the South African Schools Act. 

“We are awaiting that comprehensive report on the outcome of the disciplinary hearing. We do know that the learners are on precautionary suspension; we did raise concerns with the amount of time it took the school to place the learners on precautionary suspension. 

“They continued to threaten and bully that learner even after the parent had reported it to the school management. Overall, we also noted that there was a culture of bullying in the school, and to a certain extent, there is a coach of a certain rugby team who we believe also enables such.

“There are incidents that have been reported to him, according to what we got, and there were no actions. There was a previous incident reported to the school, and the school could not account for what they did with it,” Maimela said.

The principal confirmed knowing about the prior incident that related to the very same learner, but there was no clear indication of what the school did.

“There should be consequence management, and there should be accountability.”

theolin.tembo@inl.co.za