South African pupils are more exposed to violence at school than children in any country other than Jamaica. Veronica Hofmeester, vice-president of the SA Democratic Teachers' Union, said 22% of South African pupils have been threatened with violence, assaulted, robbed or sexually assaulted.She told delegates to a seminar on violence in schools hosted by the union in Durban yesterday that deploying police to schools was merely a short-term solution.Leshman High School, in Bulwer, KwaZulu-Natal, was closed on Friday after clashes between pupils at the school. Teachers fled as pupils from two areas fought on the school grounds after a community gathering at the weekend.On Monday the Department of Basic Education briefed parliament's education oversight committee on school safety, violence and bullying, and outlined strategies to combat these problems.Hofmeester said class sizes should be reduced, pupils included in dealing with safety concerns, and parents and communities involved in making schools safe.According to the National School Violence study in 2013, more than 90% of perpetrators of school violence were pupils.Hofmeester said that, according to the study, 12.2% of pupils had been threatened with violence by someone at school, 6.3% had been assaulted, 4.7% had been sexually assaulted or raped, and 4.5% had been robbed at school.Hofmeester said among the causes of such violence was domestic violence at home or in the community, poor upbringing, lack of parental love and guidance, and easy access to drugs and alcohol."The functionality of the school, and quality of teaching and learning, depends on whether the environment is conducive," said Enoch Nzama, of the KwaZulu-Natal department of education"Violence coming from outside or within makes it difficult to deliver programmes and achieve targets and objectives."As a department we commit ourselves to [complying with] the findings of the outcomes of this conference."Our classrooms have become the site of most forms of violence."Bullying is experienced by about 10% of our learners; 60.2% of teachers [have been] robbed."Teachers were not trained to be police or to fight violence."..