OPINION: Child Protection Week: How can we transform schools into safe havens?

As South Africa’s government observes Child Protection Week, the national lead on the initiative, the Department of Social Development (DSD), has declared that they will focus on the fight against violence and child abuse, following the revelation that more than 26 000 cases of child abuse and neglect were reported in the 2024/25 financial year. This is shocking figure that reminds us of learners who have been victimised such as ‘Cwecwe’ in Matatiele and Joshlin Smith in Saldanha Bay and still await justice and closure.  

For the national survey for our latest annual publication ‘School Dropout: Advocacy to Action’, we spoke to people who had and were contemplating dropping out of school before matriculating and found that 11% of respondents had due to bullying and other forms of harassment and assault, while 14% had dropped out due to pregnancy. This shows that sexual victimisation and other forms of gender-based violence continue to pose serious threats to the wellbeing and education of learners in South Africa. And as a number of the incidents cited by the DSD likely took place within homes, we must emphasise the need to create safe spaces for children in our communities.  

According to General Household Survey 2024, 15.6 million people were in primary or secondary schools, placing the Department of Basic Education (DBE) at the coalface of various issues affecting learners and playing an integral part of the promotion and protection of children’s rights. Even though incidents of abuse and other trauma may take place at home or other locations, schools are where incidents of abuse are often detected as the trauma and its impact on learners often manifests in classrooms.  

This places schools and educators in unlikely, and some would say unfair, ‘first’ responder’ roles. This is by far not an ideal circumstance as it places strenuous pressure on a sector already providing additional services outside of its explicit mandate. This also comes at an extended time of national austerity measures which have meant all government departments receiving less at a time when we need them to do and provide more. 

In ‘Advocacy to Action’, we found that many children in South Africa go through traumatic experiences which trigger mental health challenges. Unfavourable school conditions such as insufficient resources and various forms of violence can worsen these experiences and academic performance among learners. As a result, these learners often need extra psychosocial support to improve their social functioning and academic performance. 

Psychosocial support services assist in identifying learners who are at risk and offer them assistance that makes them more resilient, protects their emotional wellbeing and prevents disengagement and  improving their chances of completing matric.  

We had also asked the respondents to our survey if they had access to resources to help those with social or domestic problems available at their schools. While 73% did, only 33% of those who had access were completely satisfied with those services.  

Some may consider it unfair that our education system is often the first port of call for psychosocial support in our society, but the value of these spaces and the protective services they provide cannot be understated, so we must ensure that they have the necessary training and resources to assist learners in need. By doing so, we can intuitively create spaces for children to learn about how they feel; to know what is safe and unsafe; to have trusted people they can report to; to be sure that the adults who have access to them are safe people who won’t harm them and to have recourse if they do. 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Merle Mansfield is the Programme Director for the Zero Dropout Campaign. 

For more information or to arrange interviews, contact Siyabulela Sandi on 078 668 2603 or via email at siyabulela@zerodropout.co.za