The IPT, a facilitation, training and research organisation founded in 1990, was among one of the first organisations to identify school violence as major crisis in the educational environment. It was as early as 1994 that the organisation began to work with schools via the SMART
[i] Programme providing learners, teachers and the broader school with conflict management and mediation skills. By early 1999 the emerging CASS (Community Alliance for Safe Schools) Programme was used to raise media awareness about the rise in school violence and the inability of schools to manage this scourge without high levels of support.
As well as providing research data for lobbying and advocacy the CASS programme also developed a user friendly Guide for school governing bodies entitled “Protecting your school from Violence and Crime”. This was designed to be used by teachers, learners and school governing bodies to identify threats to security and provides easy to follow steps to improve safety in the school and surrounding environment, for example bus stops, routes used by learners to and from school, train stations and public space. These guidelines were tested and successfully evaluated within a cluster of three schools south of Durban by Dr Clive Harber, Professor of International Education, University of Birmingham , who found their implementation successfully reduced crime in these schools.
Since then this guide has proved invaluable to Safety Forums, Community Police Forums and others involved in community safety issues and IPT has provided training to guide implementation to school governing bodies, teachers and learners throughout South Africa.
In 1999 IPT completed a Literature Review for the national department of Safety and Security. This review examined the culture of youth violence in urban schools in order to inform the development of strategic national interventions.
To quote from the review :
“It became very clear that we know a great deal about the origin, scope and nature of the problem of violence, including the profile of the perpetrator. Furthermore, we even know about possible intervention strategies but have not worked out the precise programmes, including ways to coordinate strategies, in order to have an impact on the problem. This means that further research into the problem is not as warranted as research into methods of intervention’ (IPT,1999:2).
In the nine years since this review the IPT has continued to work extensively in the field of crime prevention. We have run projects within the Criminal Justice System with a focus on crimes against women and children, have supported SAPS victim empowerment efforts and continued our research and interventions around restorative justice and crime prevention through early community interventions.
We are currently supporting Action for a Safe South Africa with specific attention to young people between 7 and 24 years old - Opportunity of Youth - where we support the long term goal of a society which provides increased opportunities and hope for all young people irrespective of income group, race or geographic location.
South Africa's youth are exposed high levels of crime and violence in their homes, communities and schools. They are also at risk of drug and alcohol dependence. Involvement in this area of intervention will assist in promoting the potential of our youth in building a better South Africa. All of us can contribute to building the resilience of the country's youth and unleashing the creativity and enthusiasm of young South Africans to take back our future.
We are also involved with ongoing research into a rang of projects focusing on school safety and security and are actively developing tools to assist schools in achieving this aim.
