Minister denies school violence is up, dismisses call for inquiry

While the lead researcher behind the latest survey of principal health said rates of violence were climbing across the board, including in the ACT, Ms Berry said on Wednesday she did not think the problem was getting worse.

The ACT government's own data has seen a spike in the number of incidents reported by teachers since 2016, something the minister attributed to new $8 million reforms designed to increase reporting and awareness around violence in schools.

"I don’t think there’s necessarily an increase in violence," Ms Berry said. "It's that we’ve paid special attention to it and made it a priority and asked the school communities to report the violence."

When asked if the government was considering other factors behind the numbers, Ms Berry said a new occupational violence policy had already been put in place in 2017 and there was no need for an expert inquiry, which would create an unnecessary "spectacle" around the issue.

But associate professor Phillip Riley, who has led the research for the past eight years, said increases in reporting and awareness in schools did not explain what he called a concerning upward trend of violence.

Dr Riley said shifts in data could look more dramatic in a small jurisdiction like the ACT, but Canberra's principals had consistently reported high rates of violence and intimidation, including back in 2012 when the territory had the second highest rate of attacks in the country.

Since the ACT brought in the reforms, the percentage of principals disclosing violence in the survey had only increased by five per cent, though that number rose by about 25 per cent between 2017 and 2018.

"There's always been a schism between our data and department data, we have always seen more people disclosing violence to us but the problem is getting worse," Dr Riley said.

He said the high numbers in Canberra were unusual given the territory's size and comparative socio-economic advantage but it was unclear what the causes were.

On Wednesday, Opposition Leader Alistair Coe renewed his call for an independent audit of responses to violence in ACT schools, saying outside experts were needed to ensure the right interventions and supports were in place.

"The ACT government keeps saying they’ve got systems and processes in place but obviously they’re failing and when these systems fail there are real consequences," Mr Coe said.

The Canberra Liberals' first push for an inquiry was squashed by the government in the ACT Assembly earlier this month, following revelations in The Canberra Times that complaints about violence at one ACT school stretched back more than a year but procedures had repeatedly failed to keep children safe.

While the government is phasing in a $10 million IT system which will centrally collect incident data, the detail of violence between students is currently kept only at the school level, usually on paper and not easily accessible by the directorate. Teachers log occupational violence in the government's central hazard portal.

Since the roll-out of the new violence policy in schools, dozens of teachers and parents have told The Canberra Times some serious incidents were still not being reported to the directorate. In some cases, teachers said they were explicitly discouraged from logging attacks by their schools or not contacted after incidents at all.

A spokeswoman for the minister said the education directorate took incidents of violence and the reporting of them very seriously, but Ms Berry did not answer questions on how schools are held accountable for following correct procedure.

"These are all complex issues and they often need a very individual response," she said.

"There's no sweeping reform that can occur when you're trying to manage and support a child that's having particularly challenging behaviour."

The most important thing for the government was ensuring public schools remained inclusive for all children, regardless of their background, she said.

A clear problem to emerge from the survey was the need for more respect of the teaching profession, Ms Berry said, noting high numbers continue to leave the industry within their first five years.

To that end, she said the government was rolling out new mentoring and professional learning programs for staff, and had released a principal health and wellbeing plan last year.

The study surveys principals in all sectors. While attacks and threats were most prevalent in government primary schools, private and Catholic schools still recorded much higher rates of violence than the general population.

Non-government schools only have to report critical incidents, such as a fire or terrorist attack, to the directorate.

Know more? Get in touch: sherryn.groch@canberratimes.com.au