Pupil's death puts spotlight on horrific violence in Australian schools

Jai Morcom

The students of Mullumbimby High filed out of school yesterday morning and gathered in a nearby park to remember one of their classmates with an anthem of their parents' generation.

Jai Morcom, 15, died after his head was apparently smashed against a wall when he intervened in what appears to have been a turf war over tables, a simmering flashpoint at the school for years.

His friends sang John Lennon's Imagine, an icon of peace they would have been raised on in the counterculture society that surrounds the northern New South Wales town at the foot of Mt Chincogan, 10km inland from Byron Bay.

A brutal spotlight now glares on Mullumbimby and a school that is facing angry claims of endemic drugs and violence, calls for the resignation of headmaster Ian Graham and internet rallying for revenge beatings.

But Morcom's death has reopened far wider concerns about bullying and violence across Australia, where schoolyard and suburban beatings and brawls have been filmed on mobile phones and posted on YouTube.

Parents and critics complain that conferences, strategies and no-tolerance policies have failed to dent what they believe to be a growing culture of violence that has spurred an exodus from state to private schools.

In Melbourne, leading neurosurgeon Professor Jeffrey Rosenfeld took a collection of brain scans to the Age to illustrate his concern at rising violence, reflected last year in 83 operations at The Alfred Hospital for head injuries caused by assault.

"These incidents don't need to happen," he told the newspaper. "We seem to have an epidemic of this urban violence at the moment. What's changed? People seem less controlled than they used to be."

National trends appear to confirm Rosenfeld's fears. Australian Institute of Criminology statistics record an overall 55 per cent increase in assaults between 1996 and 2007, and 48 per cent for juveniles, mostly by males but with a significant rise among teenage girls.

A study by the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research found that reported violence in the state's schools rose 46 per cent between 1998 and 2003, and that almost one-third of high school students interviewed had admitted attacking a schoolmate in the previous 12 months.

"Preventing violence at school is no easy task," said bureau director Don Weatherburn in the study. "Schools trying to inculcate a culture of intolerance towards violence sometimes find themselves dealing with students whose parents condone violent behaviour."

Last weekend Queensland Education Department research reported to a community forum showed that every week five children in every class are bullied, and up to 70 per cent of suspensions are related to bullying.

Jai Morcom's death has pulled attention back to schoolyard violence.

From the accounts of friends, classmates and family, he was a normal, decent youth not given to fighting, but who stepped in when a confrontation over schoolyard tables turned ugly. "You don't send your kids to school thinking they're going to die," Jai's mother, Kim, said.

Although the details are confused, it appeared he was pushed against a wall, striking his head and falling to the ground and allegedly kicked.

Police investigations were continuing yesterday, but the tragedy unleashed a tirade against violence at the school, the inability to prevent or contain it, and the failure of anti-bullying strategies.

NSW Secondary Principals' Council president Jim McAlpine told ABC Radio the headmaster was not at fault, but said schools needed to constantly consider anti-violence strategies. But public opinion has hammered the failure of schools to counter violence.

Feedback on www.news.com.au attacked teachers who did not control students, demanded tougher laws, lambasted declining moral values and called for the return of corporal punishment.

Teachers responded with frustration, saying they could not under law intervene.

Melbourne teacher Marc Williams said if other students could not break up a fight he risked assault charges by pushing in between the fighters, raising his arms to protect his head and upper torso.

One female teacher who tried this tactic had been punched to the ground.