The Chairperson of the Portfolio Committee on Basic Education has told the principal of Milnerton High School, along with members of the school governing body (SGB) and management team to ensure that the school has an effective anti-bullying policy in place as a matter of urgency.
The committee also, in the presence of senior officials of the Western Cape Department of Education, parents of the bullied learners and representatives of the Western Cape provincial office of the Human Rights Commission, called on the school leadership to ensure that there is a concrete turnaround strategy in place to eliminate, among other things, the deeply entrenched culture of intolerance among the school’s learners.
The committee visited the school yesterday in the wake of the horrific assault on a 16-year old learner by several other boys, who used various objects, including a hockey stick, hose pipe and belt to beat the boy. Before the committee reached the school, it visited the home of the victim at Parklands as a gesture of support to the traumatised family.
The parents told the committee that their trauma has been deepened by the death threats their son has received for telling his parents about the assault.
In the committee’s engagement with the school’s leadership team and SGB, the principal noted that there is anti-bullying policy in place, but when he was asked to show it to the committee, he was unable to do so, leading the committee to conclude that it does not exist. The school’s code of conduct, which was provided by the principal, mentioned anti-bullying in a paragraph but with no tangible plan to address the problem.
When she explained the purpose of the meeting, the Chairperson of the committee, Ms Joy Maimela, said after the committee was aware of this horrendous act from social media, it had asked the office of the provincial Department of Education for a preliminary report on the matter, but it never received it.
The committee welcomed the update that there will be a disciplinary hearing on Saturday, 25 October. It urged the principal to share the outcomes of the disciplinary hearings with the committee the following day. The Human Rights Commission representatives told the committee that their office will also conduct investigations on the matter and share the report of their findings with the committee.
Ms Maimela, said a second session will be convened on the matter, away from the school grounds. She linked the culture of bullying to rugby first team and urged the school to investigate that possibility and uproot it if it exists. Ms Maimela also called on the school to develop an anti-bullying policy with speed, expedite the disciplinary hearing process, and ensure that there is transformation that uproots all the tendencies that stifle change in the school.
Distributed by APO Group on behalf of Republic of South Africa: The Parliament.