FIRST ON 7: Dozens of schools in Sydney's west and south-west are about to undergo a major security facelift.
7News can reveal fences which include barbed wire will soon be torn down and replaced by ones that are less intimidating for students.
The fences are supposed to create fear, with sharp metal designed to hurt. It's not what you would expect at a primary school.
"The exact words they say, it feels like we're walking into a jail," Tregear Public School Principal Richard Ford said.
Barbed wire fences have guarded schools for decades, but parents fear they also upset children.
"They feel very intimated, very closed in. We want them to enjoy school," teacher and parent Natalie Tauveve said.
The state government agrees, and it will spend $5 million tearing the fences down at 33 schools.
"The unfortunate thing where some of these schools are some of the most disadvantaged parts of particularly western and south west Sydney," the NSW Education Minister Adrian Piccoli said.
It is not just how these fences look but how they make children feel.
Teachers say some of their students have parents in jail and this barbed wire upsets them.
"Some members of the community have spent time in prison or a detention centre or juvenile detention centre, so to have barbed wire at school is totally unacceptable," Adrian Piccoli said.
Not only do children feel more comfortable with the newer fences, but they give schools better protection.
An audit found they reduced;
- Arson 100%
- Trespass 88%
- Vandalism 71%
- Break-ins 50%
"It's very difficult to get through the new fence type I think definitely we'll have a reduction in break ins," principal Richard Ford said.
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