Durban — Statistics SA has revealed in its latest report that abuse by teachers often targets girl pupils more than boys.
They said that girls in South Africa were subjected to corporal punishment, physical violence, insults, being teased or harassed by teachers more often than boys.
Stats SA said children in KwaZulu-Natal suffered the most from corporal punishment inflicted by teachers at school, followed by the Eastern Cape and North West.
This is despite the ban on corporal punishment in schools 20 years ago. The most common form of violence experienced by children at schools was corporal punishment by teachers, with close to 84% of children experiencing this type of violence in 2019, followed by verbal abuse by teachers (13.7%) and physical violence by teachers (10.6%). The percentage of females who experienced corporal punishment declined by 4.3 percentage points from 2009 to 2019, while those who experienced physical abuse by teachers remained unchanged.
The report also said that exposure to violence affected mostly children from poor households. Children in the lowest household income quintile were two times more likely to have experienced some sort of violence in 2009 and the risks only reduced slightly within a decade.
Overall, the percentage of children who experienced some sort of violence at school declined more in rural areas than in urban areas. Furthermore, the percentage of children who received corporal punishment declined in urban areas.
“Other forms of violence, on the other hand, increased in urban areas between 2009 and 2019. Physical abuse by teachers remained mostly unchanged, while there was a 6.1 percentage point increase in verbal abuse by fellow learners in urban areas,” said Stats SA.
The report also revealed that bullying was a reality for a large proportion of children aged 5 to 17 in the country as close to 15% were verbally abused either by teachers or fellow pupils in 2009 and this increased to 17.7% in 2019. Verbal abuse by teachers often takes place in urban areas and targets children aged 10 to 12 years (37.7% in 2019) and teenagers aged 15 to 17 years (33.1% in 2019). The majority of children who were victims of verbal abuse by other pupils were found in Gauteng. The occurrence of such abuse was also prominent in the Western Cape, North West and KwaZulu-Natal.
Children who experienced childhood abuse or trauma may turn out to be less engaged in social activities and face a difficult adulthood. These negative outcomes could create an environment of dependency if not addressed earlier in life.
Awareness of the illegality of corporal punishment did not stop households from having strong opinions about the need for corporal punishment both at school and at home. More households in rural areas than urban areas had perceptions that it was acceptable for children to be physically punished for breaking the rules.
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