The School in School Violence in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa

Abstract

The aim of this study was firstly to determine whether there is a correlation between the predictors of school violence (school culture and school climate) and school violence, and secondly to investigate the influence of school-specific demographic variables on safety at schools, school culture and school climate, and school violence. Two research hypotheses have been formulated: (1) School culture and school climate can be used to explain school violence; (2) Significant differences in the average counts for school safety, school culture, school climate and school violence occur between the following variables: gender, grade and the size of the school. An adapted California School Climate and Safety Survey - Short Form (CSCSS-SF), which has been utilised as data collection instrument, was completed by 900 Grade 10-12 learners. With the help of Pearson's product-moment correlation coefficient, it was determined that, the better the school culture and school climate at a school, the lower the levels of violence at the school. The results of the MANOVA analysis indicate that there are statistically significant differences in the average school culture and school climate counts, as well as the count for school violence for all the biographic variables. Significant differences in mean scores for the two gender s, different school sizes and grades for the CSCSS scales were determined with the help of unidirectional variance analyses. The results of this study are confirmed by earlier research findings. The article concludes with recommendations on how the results can be utilised to address school violence.