Rising school assaults a reflection of the broader community

A Herald report that assaults across all NSW schools have risen 50 per cent in the past decade is a harrowing outcome for education authorities, governments and parents who invest so much time, effort, money and hope into improving students’ lives and outcomes.

The latest Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research data tracks the rise of violence in our schools: police had to be called on 1297 occasions in 2013, but by last year that had jumped to 1992. The violence seems to have been turbocharged by COVID-19 with reported assaults leaping by 500 incidents last year as many schools relaxed standards for students returning to full-time classes. On average, police are now notified of school assaults 10 times each school day.

Last month, a teacher from Maitland Grossmann High School was charged after being filmed allegedly assaulting a student. Last November, two girls were filmed bashing a classmate from Elderslie High School at a bus stop, and in August, police said students filmed brawling outside LaSalle Catholic College in Bankstown were armed with knives and knuckle dusters. A mass brawl was filmed at a school in the Orange region; in the Wollondilly area, a staff member was assaulted by a student with a weapon and a student was significantly injured in a fight in the St George region.

NSW Secondary Principals’ Council deputy president Denise Lofts said the rise in serious assaults resulted from disagreements that students had during out-of-school hours and on social media which spilled over onto school grounds.

These unprecedented levels of student violence have imposed a sort of Lord of the Flies reality on NSW schools where co-operation and collaboration have been replaced by competitive and brutal behaviours as students struggle to find their place in the pecking order.

The school violence keeps mounting despite consistent attempts to deal with unruly conduct by authorities. In a bid to help public, private and Catholic schools improve increasingly difficult student behaviour, the Perrottet government appointed Emeritus Professor Donna Cross as the state’s first chief behaviour adviser a year ago. The Perrottet government also reduced its own tougher suspensions and send-home regulations after an outcry over the number of Indigenous students and students with disabilities disproportionately affected. Now the new NSW Education Minister, Prue Car, has announced a review into that very suspension policy, not least because some educators claim it undermines teacher authority.

The surge in violence in NSW schools comes as a federal inquiry begins hearings this month to examine the issue of increasing disruption in Australian school classrooms. Terms of reference for the Senate inquiry include an Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development study from 2018 which identified that Australia had some of the most unruly classrooms in the world, ranking 69 out of 76 jurisdictions worldwide.

Historically, NSW public schools carried unruly students as private and Catholic schools routinely unloaded them early to stop them from distracting year 12 studies. The former Nationals MP, former education minister and educationalist academic Adrian Piccoli said public schools appeared to still suffer from more negative publicity about violent incidents. But, he noted, private and Catholic schools did not have the same reporting requirements. “What is happening in schools is a reflection of what is happening in the broader community; nobody is encouraging students to engage in these behaviours in school,” he said.

Clearly, the emergence of the internet, mobile phones and the pandemic are huge influences that have facilitated challenges to older rules and lionised behaviour once regarded as unacceptable. Sadly, learning to deal with violence is not to surrender but rather a recognition that it is a charge levied by modern society.

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