Examination of Witnesses (Questions 160-172)
MS CAROLINE
DAY, MR
BENET MIDDLETON,
DR SHOBHA
DAS AND
MS CHRIS
GRAVELL
22 NOVEMBER 2006
Q160 Jeff Ennis: I put down an Early
Day Motion in relation to that.
Mr Middleton: A number of schools
and individual teachers have been nominated for good practice,
that is, where the school has acknowledged that disability and
autism is an issue and it needs to think about how to respond
to it that has made a huge difference. In answer to your question,
I think that it is a combination of things. I believe that the
DfES guidance needs to be strengthened so that schools have a
clearer idea of what it is they need to do, and schools then need
to think about whole school approaches. Individual teachers need
to think about how they communicate with the parents and pupil
to identify what that person needs. It is about what the individual
child requires. If you like, it is at all three levels.
Q161 Jeff Ennis: As a supplementary,
DfES guidance recognises the importance of monitoring anti-bullying
work to see whether it is effective, but are schools also doing
this as they should be?
Ms Gravell: I do not think that
evidence is coming through necessarily. Sometimes the problem
lies with the victim who reports bullying; or the number of complaints
is so small, possibly because given the school culture in the
playground that this should be going on is thought to be relatively
normal. Therefore, that level of reporting, even if it gets into
the school self-evaluation and possibly into Ofsted reports, may
conceal a much bigger problem. The other matter is that where
individuals have been bullied and have suffered they need to be
treated in a much more individualised way rather like looked-after
children and their outcomes need to be subject to individual attention,
not mass monitoring. All our studies of serious cases show that
the solutions for those children need to be different in each
case. One can have total invisibility in management information
of what are very serious underlying issues. I think that when
Ofsted talked to the Committee in May it said that it did not
have figures and did not believe that they were being collected.
Therefore, there is lack of accountability in terms of schools
knowing what it is they are reporting. Even if they are reporting
it properly it is pretty weak at the moment in terms of accountability.
Q162 Chairman: You are the experts.
You are not flagging up that there is good practice and systems
that can be adopted in every school to drive a change in the system.
Ms Gravell: We said earlier that
we thought there was excellent practice out there and excellent
training and advice.
Q163 Chairman: But if we were taking
evidence on teaching children to read we would have people bouncing
in here to say that they had found the Holy Grail; they would
say that if they were given Synthetic Phonetics, Jolly Phonics
or whatever they would have the cure. You do not seem to be saying
to us that this system adopted in schools in Avon produces real
results and everyone should copy it. You all seem to be groping
for the answer rather than knowing of any cure that is available.
Ms Gravell: I think that I would
be prepared to go out on a limb and not grope and mention the
kind of things that the Children's Commissioner has recommended:
the CHIPS programme and the Sheffield programme. That is one of
the few that has been fairly rigorously evaluated. The common
theme is that they heavily involve pupils. Ofsted says that parents
also need to be involved. There is a planned response. Under that
programme the training of teachers in the techniques used and
the training of schools does not take that long. Very often we
find that it has not happened, or has not happened for a long
time, and teachers do not have the confidence to tackle problems
properly.
Dr Das: We have been hedging our
bets a little bit, but if you try to break down what good practice
looks like it is easy to identify some of its contours. For us,
the key is communication. If there is good communication between
the school, the community, parents and pupils a lot of the cases
that we get will not come to us at all; the problem will be solved.
I believe that communication barriers are a big problem and lead
to bad practice. There are things like inter-agency and good partnership
working, which is another key factor for us. There is ongoing
training of staff. Another element is lack of complacency, as
well as peer involvement in both the formulation and monitoring
of policies. The problem is that we do not have any examples where
all of these things happen in the same place.
Q164 Chairman: Caroline Day, is there
any stunning good practice that can be rolled out?
Ms Day: From Barnardo's perspective,
it does not usually work directly in schools. We have a lot of
services and we may have support groups in schools and so it is
difficult to give specific examples. One need that we detected
was greater dissemination of good practice. From our perspective
we have our own anti-bullying policy and ensure that that goes
out across all our services so that all our staff are aware of
that. We ensure that at organisational level we are doing the
best we can to make sure that bullying of young people does not
occur and it is challenged and tackled in an appropriate way.
But I believe that there is some merit in having a mechanism to
link up good practice so people talk about it more. As a voluntary
organisation we often have pockets of practice that do not really
get shared. Certainly, I think that that would be very useful
given the difference between the voluntary and educational aspects.
Q165 Jeff Ennis: We have been led
to believe that the DfES provides a very small pocket of money
for anti-bullying programmes. I believe that it is £1.4 million
which is very paltry. Do you feel that even that small amount
of money is being spent in the most useful way at the present
time? Should the Department not bother or increase the amount?
Mr Middleton: I do not know how
the Department is spending it.
Q166 Jeff Ennis: Were you aware that
the DfES was providing this amount of money? That tends to indicate
that at the present time it is being wasted.
Dr Das: It has a phone helpline,
so perhaps that is what takes up a big part of the resources.
Q167 Jeff Ennis: I think a helpline
would cost more.
Ms Day: Its very useful TeacherNet
website has examples of good practices.
Ms Gravell: There is a very good
anti-bullying pack.
Helen Jones: Although we have criticised
aspects of it, generally it is pretty good, is it not?
Jeff Ennis: Mr Middleton has criticised
that quite extensively in his submission.
Q168 Fiona Mactaggart: Dr Das, I
just want to pick up one matter that I thought you referred to
earlier—perhaps I misheard you—about people feeling
unwilling to report racist incidents and bullying because they
fear consequences for their own careers and so on. Can you tell
me what evidence you have on that?
Dr Das: I was referring to schools
being unwilling to report to what were called LAs but now various
other bodies. Schools are reluctant to report upwards and, therefore,
the problem is that no one ever gets a sense of the true picture
or the scale of the problem. For instance, looking at the figures
for Bristol last year in the LA reports there were about 670 racist
incidents in schools. To say that that is the tip of the iceberg
is an exaggeration; the problem is probably vastly greater than
that. Schools have a good deal of fear in reporting to the LA
because their reputation will be diminished and they will be seen
as racist schools and somehow it shows them in a bad light. That
is the thinking of a lot of teachers and head teachers. We do
not hear of it. I think that pupils are reluctant to report for
very different reasons. There is lack of confidence in the system
because historically racist bullying has not been dealt with particularly
well, so the school does not see very much point in reporting.
Our big challenge is to improve reporting on both aspects from
pupils and schools upwards.
Q169 Fiona Mactaggart: How do you
do it?
Dr Das: For me, a big part of
that answer is inter-agency working; it is about working with
both the statutory and voluntary sectors in improving the understanding
of school liaison officers. Police officers based in most if not
all of the secondary schools have a huge lack of understanding
of what racist incidents mean. Often police officers in schools
will hear about racist incidents but never tell the school about
it. All the parts of that puzzle need to be addressed individually.
Ms Day: There is also one small
issue that we are beginning to notice. I do not know whether it
has been around for a long time and is just emerging or whether
it is quite new. I refer to the assumption of what racist bullying
actually is. The assumption is that it is often between white
and black cultures, or white and Asian cultures. At the moment
we find that there is far more of an inter-BME culture of bullying
and a growing issue to do with pockets of Eastern European economic
migrants across the country. It is becoming more about one's nationality
rather than just one's colour or race.
Q170 Chairman: Is there research
to back the assertion that girls are as likely to bully as boys
and they are becoming more physical in their bullying over time?
Is that just a notion or is there research to back it up? Is there
a difference between the genders?
Dr Das: Our work does not show
a significant difference. It shows that there are more male perpetrators.
In some cases there is more violence and aggression where boys
are the perpetrators, but in general we have not seen any significant
patterns, except that girls are bullied more than boys.
Q171 Chairman: Caroline Day, what is
your view on this?
Ms Day: Young people very much
identify that it is done by both sets of young people to both
sets of young people. I believe that at the moment there is difficulty
in media portrayal which often seems to put girls ahead of boys.
There have been a lot more cases of girls doing extreme and very
violent bullying. There have been recent cases involving stabbing
and matters of that kind. I think that that brings it to people's
minds a lot more and implies that girls are bullying more than
boys. We have had very mixed views on that. I cannot definitely
say either way.
Q172 Chairman: We are coming to the
end of this session. Is there anything that you want to impart
to the Committee before we finish? I do not want you to go away
totally frustrated that you have not put everything before the
Committee that you dearly want to put to us. Mr Middleton, is
there anything that you want to add?
Mr Middleton: One subject on which
I have not touched is that autistic children may display bullying
behaviours themselves because of their misunderstanding of social
rules. The issue is whether or not that really can be called bullying.
That takes us back to the definition of bullying, because they
genuinely will not understand why they should not behave in a
certain way. We need to address that potentially through things
like social skills training and to work with that person on what
is and what is not acceptable behaviour. Often, it will be almost
a logical reaction to what is going on around them, but as soon
as they are shown that something is not appropriate behaviour
they will change it. It is sometimes quite difficult for schools
to recognise that they might need to take that approach with that
sort of person.
Ms Gravell: We have talked about
the effects on the child as a result of bullying and the potential
for that child to lose out on education by being kept at home.
We also have problems with parents being threatened with prosecution
for non-attendance. Sometimes parents ring us about that and then
we find out about the bullying problem underlying it. Another
aspect that we encounter is that the child retaliates against
a bully and is excluded for that response. We have dedicated exclusion
help lines. In 5% of the calls parents say that the exclusion
has been for that reason, so it is not an insignificant matter.
Dr Das: I should like to make
three very brief points. One is about better resourcing for the
voluntary sector in terms of helping the statutory sector to deal
with bullying. I think that that needs to be looked at. The second
matter is to do with the school's accountability. It takes us
back to the point made by the Chairman. We have a problem where
often the schools will do nothing, but when we approach the LA
and CYPS they say that they cannot make them do anything. It is
a real bind; it does not help to improve the situation. The third
matter is to do with complaints procedures. They are very arduous
and act as a deterrent for parents who use them. They are sent
from pillar to post.
Ms Day: For us the aim would be
to ensure that children participate in all of this, that we listen
to them and use their language and work with them on what they
see as bullying and the changes that they want to make, building
on the whole school ethos but also instilling values in the community
so that children have mutual respect and understanding for everybody.
Through that we must make sure that they participate all the time.
Chairman: I thank our witnesses for their
time. This has been a really interesting and valuable session
for us. If when you have gone away you think of something that
you should have said to us you know where we are.
| 
