Artful Dodger: Thank you for your information and comments. I wanted to hear from someone that had ACTUAL experience in the schooling field, and not from someone that was just guessing.

The doco that I watched was horrific and parents didn't know if their kids were going to survive the day at school or not.

We are very lucky here that we dont have the "gang mentality" that other countries appear to have AS YET.

Thanks for your input

Bernice:There are many factors that can contribute to the kind of violence the school in the documentary experienced.  And unfortunately, for many parents it's also a situation where they are trapped in the school system.  For many, it's either go to that school or it's no school at all.  Not a good choice. 

I have faith in good administrators and good teachers to meet this challenge.  I have no faith in any government to fix the problem.  The government is far too often incompetent in these kinds of things.  Case in point is the No Child Left Behind legislation that Bush signed.  The failure of this legislation serves to illustrate just how stupid political can be.  Often the solutions they find are nothing more than attempts to score political points at the expense of innocent people.