An Investigation into the Disciplinary Measures used in South African Schools: How Effective are they to the Learners?

The gaining ground concern on the increasing cases of learner’s indiscipline in schools currently and during the past number of years has become a bone of contention in schools. This has also been observed by other researchers in this discipline who perceive that indiscipline has led to concerns about academic performance, safety and security apprehensions in schools. In addition, there have been cases of serious injuries and fatalities within school premises in some schools in South Africa (Ngcukana, 2009). The problem of learner’s indiscipline has been characterized as grave and pervasive, unconstructively affecting student’s learning (Holden, 2002). The aforesaid problem manifests itself in a variety of ways which include disruptive learners, vandalism, truancy, smoking, disobedience, intimidation, delinquency, murder, assault, rape, theft and general violence (De Wet, 2003: 168). Wilde (1995) is also disturbed by such happenings and argues that with rampant indiscipline as displayed in the various forms mentioned above, teaching and learning have become difficult. Wilde (1995) further points out inter alia that answering back, talking ‘out of turn’, getting out of seats ‘without permission’ and general rowdiness are habitual in schools. In view of this, De Wet (2003) notes that without doubt if schools encounter proliferating ill-discipline as exhibited above, the core business of teaching and learning has turned out to be difficult if not impossible. It is on these grounds that this study is eager to find ways of bringing back discipline as it is apparent that the alternatives for corporal punishment are not working. In other words, the study strives to look for alternatives to ATCP. The above doubt is based on the fact that for the better part of the twentieth century, corporal punishment was central for most teachers and learners in South African Schools (Wolfgang, 2001). But with the advent of democracy in 1994 amidst transformation, one change in the educational arena was the outlawing of Corporal punishment in all schools in terms of the South African Schools Act (Republic of South Africa 1996b). The new constitutional and legislative framework and policies had implications on how schools should maintain learner’s discipline (Ramadiro and Vally, 2005). The provisions were delineated in the constitution and other statutes amid them SASA (Zaibert, 2006). SASA provided the establishment of the code of conduct in all schools. It prohibited corporal punishment and proposed its alternatives (RSA, 1996). Hence, the Department of Education (2000) endorsed the Alternatives (ATCP) which is in place at the moment. Nevertheless, research is ambivalent concerning the usefulness of ATCP which leads this researcher to the impression that by its standard it seems not to be operative in the manner it is hailed by the DoE. This is meant to say that ATCP is not at all playing the role that corporal punishment used to play and there is need to seek other means and majors to instil discipline in our schools so that learners can become disciplined and more responsible. The main objective of this study is to capture both learners and educators’ views on the effectiveness of disciplinary measures used in schools and classrooms. The intention is to find out how the disciplinary measures used can achieve the desired goals with the view to suggest disciplinary approaches that can lead to the development of selfdiscipline and responsible behaviour in learners as compared to ATCP which is punitive in nature.