Accountability for parents towards learners’ violence in high schools of the Malamulele Central circuit of South Africa

Abstract

School violence has globally been identified as a security problem. Violence in schools and its threats are among the significant contributing risk factors in the South African Public education. The study sought to explore and describe accountability for parents on their learners’ violence in schools of the Malamulele Central circuit of South Africa. This paper used qualitative methodology. Nonprobability sampling through purposive sampling were used. The study revealed that there are so many occurrences of school violence reported from different schools where leaners fight with teachers and conflicts arise amongst learners themselves. The likelihood, escalating and alarming frequencies of violence in schools threaten to have adverse effects in the delivery of service by teachers for enhancing teaching and learning. The factors associated with accountability of parents towards learners’ violence such as low parental involvement in learners’ education, parents not visiting schools for monitoring learners’ performance, and parental contribution by fighting and blaming teachers when learners did wrong. The following has been recommended to maximize parental accountability to school violence: involvement of various professionals working directly with communities as an integrated approach towards reducing violence in schools, Social workers can serve as educators on the other hand to inform parents about school violence. The social workers’ functions in schools are to build relationships, conduct assessment, to work with multidisciplinary teams, and helping learners to address the difficulties that lead them to school violence.

Keywords: Parental accountability, School violence, High school, Multidisciplinary teams.