Learner discipline: An Australian perspective
Australian schools by and large are safe schools. Nonetheless discipline problems do exist – including bullying behaviour. For this kind of problem schools should have management policies in place. As traditional behaviour-management practices – including corporal punishment – are largely prohibited in Australian schools, contemporary practices centre on management through supportive school programmes, including appropriate curricula and school-support structures. This article supports the belief that measures such as the exclusion of misbehaving learners should be treated with caution. Measures such as this might not reflect accepted international principles and practices and should only be exercised in the most extreme circumstances. The article also supports the view that it is part of the school’s role to ensure that all learners are aware of the reality that while they have rights, they also have corresponding responsibilities. This awareness is more likely to be achieved in a supportive school culture where each learner is recognised as having unique qualities that can mature and grow in an appropriate learning environment.
The Impact of Crime among Learners in High School
The issue of crime committed at school is escalating among high school learners and this is a serious issue in South Africa as it has turned to be contagious to the neigbouring schools. The qualitative study assessed the impact of crime among high school learners, their parents and teachers as well. The open-ended questionnaires were distributed to 38 learners in two high schools in Alice, Eastern Cape, 19 learners from each school. Simple random sampling was used to select respondents. Sub-topics of questionnaires were divided in to three sections: biographical information, the causes of crime among learners, and the impact of crime in schools. The data was analysed using content analysis. The results of this study indicated that this crime may be caused mainly by poor role modelling at home by parents/ guardians, by significant others such as the teachers and the older students through negative peer pressure. The impact of this crime may lead to victims dropping out of school due to fear of victimization by their fellow students and imprisonment by the perpetrators. Teachers are also affected by the crime in a way that they live with fear and insecure inside school premises because other learners carry dangerous weapons inside the school premises. Findings showed that crime does affect the learner’s in their studies and psychological; in a sense that crime scene always leaves post-traumatic stress disorders to the observers. It also promotes retaliation behaviour among the learners and they spent less time concentrating on their books. DOI: 10.5901/ajis.2014.v3n1p333
Good elementary education
Abstract The aim of this study is to identify good elementary education standards that would contribute to the elimination of inequalities in the implementations regarding the utilization -and making it utilized- of the right to elemetary education. Being a descriptive one, this study attempted to identify the definitions and explanations of the right to education in universal documents by a review of literature. The study then attempted to explain the drawbacks concerning the protection and the utilization of the right to education. The study proposes some standards such as accessibility, content, operation so as to eliminate the obstacles hindering the utilization of the right to elementary education.