Examination of Witnesses (Questions 200-218)
MR STEVE
SINNOTT AND
PROFESSOR PETER
K SMITH
22 NOVEMBER 2006
Q200 Chairman: Given your previous
remarks, I am getting the feeling of dislocation to which I referred
earlier. I go to schools and see teachers teaching. In good schools
they do not say to me that they are so restricted by the curriculum
that they cannot teach these matters. I see highly professional
teachers teaching. There may be more pressure on teachers, but
they are certainly teaching in that broader sense. Do you agree?
Mr Sinnott: You talk to teachers
and I also talk to teachers. I have seen the evidence in the past.
We have had too many exclusions.
Q201 Chairman: I think that there
are fantastic teachers out there and you do not think so.
Mr Sinnott: I think that there
are terrific teachers out there and I am very proud to represent
them. I believe that there are environments within schools where
we can support all the good qualifies that teachers have, but
my comment applies across the system. Across the system we need
to ensure and be confident that there is enough space for teachers
to be able to deal with the wider needs of children than I think
they are currently able to do.
Q202 Paul Holmes: Is there a clear
consensus on what is the best strategy for teachers to use? When
I was teaching in the late 1990s teachers were told that they
should not confront, blame or punish a bully but get the bully
and victim together in a non-judgmental and non-blame environment
and get them to talk over the issues, for example, "Why are
you encouraging people to bully you by your behaviour?" That
was a matter that I and other teachers found a fairly alarming
thing to be told to do at that time. Is there a consensus among
experts as to how schools should do this?
Mr Sinnott: First, what happens
in a school should be done in accordance with the school's policy.
In my view what is effective is to ensure that the way it is dealt
with meets the circumstances of the particular situation. I think
that in certain circumstances it is proper for the perpetrator
of bullying to be permanently excluded but that in other circumstances
that would be wrong. I think that in certain circumstances to
bring the bullied and perpetrator together is appropriate. I do
not think there is one way to deal with that. I think that you
deal with it in terms of the circumstances and the context of
the school's policy.
Professor Smith: I agree with
that. Clearly, there is not universal agreement on the best way
to deal with bullying. I think that the three things on which
we would all agree are: any incident of bullying should be taken
seriously; the victim should be supported; and we should do what
we can to ensure that the bullying child does not persists in
that behaviour. It is the last point that is perhaps the most
contentious. What are the best ways to ensure that a bully does
not continue to bully? Is it some sort of direct punishment? Is
it more a matter of talking to the bully and encouraging the bully
to understand the feelings of the victim, or is it something in
between? There is quite a lot of disagreement there. There is
not a great deal of evidence to tell us in which circumstances
which approach works best. I think that more research is required,
but at the present time there is a range of approaches. You choose
the approach that best matches the circumstances, depending on
the age of the child, the severity of the incident and whether
or not it is the first time or the tenth time it has happened.
Q203 Stephen Williams: You say that
a school should have a range of policy options and match them
to the particular bully in the circumstances rather than that
the school should choose a policy to be applied in all the circumstances?
Professor Smith: That is my view.
Q204 Stephen Williams: I want to
return to where we started and the declining incidence of bullying.
You will have heard in the previous session the representative
of Support Against Racist Incidents say that in her view schools
did not report racist incidents sufficiently and so there is an
under-reporting of racism in spite of the statutory duty on schools
to do so, whereas in homophobic bullying there is no statutory
duty to record such incidents or report them in any way. How can
we be confident that bullying is going down because we do not
even know the extent of certain types of bullying?
Professor Smith: We cannot really
be confident because we do not have good enough data. If I may,
I will expand on that in a moment. I just think that the indications
at present, on the best evidence we have—not just the Leicestershire
data but a number of other sources—are that it is going
down slowly. We also know that interventions do help. The interventions
in the Sheffield project helped, and the evaluations of other
methods show that they have some effect. Given that we have been
doing intervention work for 10-12 years one would expect there
to be some impact, but we need a much better auditing base to
find out what is happening both across different regions of the
country and schools which try different approaches and over time,
and for different types of bullying and harassment, including
prejudice-based bullying. There is opportunity to do that under
the Every Child Matters agenda and the Joint Area Reviews
that take place. Unfortunately, there does not seem to be very
clear guidance coming from the Government as to how much schools
or local authorities should be reporting on the various indicators
in the requirements of the Joint Area Reviews and also from Ofsted.
If most schools and education authorities annually did an audit
of a lot of these indicators it could satisfy Ofsted and Joint
Area Reviews and it would also be a very useful resource for us
to answer the sort of questions that you are asking.
Q205 Stephen Williams: Mr Sinnott,
your submission recommends that each school should have a trained
counsellor. It sounds as if you would prefer that individual to
be a teacher. I just want to explore the sort of skills that that
individual would need. Quite a good deal of empathy would be required
to deal with somebody who has suffered racist or homophobic abuse.
Do you believe that one trained counsellor in a school is enough?
Mr Sinnott: We are probably saying
that there should be at least one. In some of the very large comprehensive
schools one might need more than one counsellor, but I believe
that the skills needed to deal with prejudice-based bullying,
for example if somebody is bullied because of race, or disability
or sexual orientation are similar. I believe that that person
can have generic skills in order to deal effectively with those
matters. They are good skills for a counsellor. The counsellor
should also be in a position to lead the school on a whole range
of anti-bullying techniques and policies. I think that schools
can do a lot of effective work if they have school counsellors.
Q206 Stephen Williams: One of the
reasons I am asking that is that, as we know from previous sessions,
particularly for gay children it is quite different because they
probably do not have a peer group, whereas all the other groups
of children who may be bullied have some emotional support from
their families or friends in similar circumstances, so if a counsellor
is to deal with homophobic bullying he needs particularly strong
skills.
Mr Sinnott: They do, and we would
want the school counsellor to have those skills. At the same time,
I refer to paragraph 74 of our evidence which deals exactly with
homophobic bullying and some of the changes in the legal situation.
I think that we can do a lot of work in raising the awareness
of head teachers to some of the changes in the legislation.
Q207 Stephen Williams: In several
submissions one finds the phrase "a whole school issue";
it is not just how to deal with particular incidents of bullying.
There should be a message throughout the school that certain types
of bullying are completely unacceptable, in particular racism
and homophobia, and that also feeds through into the citizenship
agenda. Presumably, that is something which both of you advocate.
Mr Sinnott: Absolutely.
Professor Smith: Yes. The question
of the whole school policy still needs more attention and support.
It has been pointed out, and is fairly well known, that about
6% of school policies mention homophobic bullying. That is rather
old data. We are currently looking at 140 school policies and
the position is much the same. Although there are some very good
policies, every one of them could be improved. A lot of them are
quite deficient in some respects. For example, a good policy should
give advice on what sort of sanctions the school will use. We
have talked about this before. We agree that a school should have
a unified approach; whatever its philosophy, there should be consensus
within the school as to what it will do and the range of sanctions
available, when they will be used, how parents will be involved
and so on. Policies are not always clear about that. There are
lots of things that should be in policies and sometimes they are
and sometimes not. A good school policy will cover not just pupil-pupil
bullying but pupil-teacher, teacher-pupil or possibly teacher-teacher
bullying. It should be a whole school policy, not just pupil-pupil
bullying. Schools may need some support in maximising the potential
of their policies.
Q208 Helen Jones: We have heard a
little about the problem of teachers being bullied. Does Mr Sinnott
have any evidence to give us based on his experience as to how
widespread that is? Is it a minor or major problem? Is there an
increase in bullying of teachers by pupils, or is that one of
these urban myths that we hear?
Mr Sinnott: It is being raised
with the National Union of Teachers by teachers in ways that it
was never raised before. If I go to a meeting somebody wants to
talk about an issue about which he feels bullied by other teachers
within the school and feels that that is often in relation to
his or her job. As a result of some of the high stakes programmes
run within our schools we are creating an environment in which
everybody feels under stress. Sometimes it is the stressed head
teacher or head of department who takes particular action against
a teacher who then feels that he or she has been bullied or harassed.
Sometimes that has found an outlet in remarks that are made by
a teacher in relation to another teacher that are entirely inappropriate.
For example, it was an item that was raised at our conference
this year. It surprised many of us that that was one of the key
concerns of teachers. If you look at the evidence produced by
the Teacher Support Network and the number of phone calls that
it receives, this is a new area for many of us. We have to give
particular advice to tackle these issues. It is a very important
issue in the teaching of teachers.
Q209 Helen Jones: You are talking
about teachers bullying other teachers, if I understand you correctly.
Do you believe that that is a new phenomenon, or is it just that
people are more willing to report it than they were?
Mr Sinnott: What goes on in schools
is more pressurised than it was in the past. I believe that it
has increased as a result of those pressures in schools.
Q210 Helen Jones: I am trying to
find out if this is a real problem or just a good story. Do you
come across many instances of teachers being bullied by pupils;
and, if so, do you think they are adequately trained to deal with
it?
Mr Sinnott: There are two ways
of looking at it. There are good examples of schools being able
to tackle the issue. There are lots of examples of schools behaving
entirely properly where a teacher has been assaulted or bullied
by a youngster or group of youngsters. I can also give you examples
of ways in which schools have behaved inappropriately in protecting
teachers. A teacher out on a Saturday evening sees a group of
youngsters and ends up being abused and called a lesbian in front
of people in the street. The school did not want to deal in a
very robust way with those youngsters whom we believed should
have been permanently excluded. We have to represent that teacher
and say that we want a more robust response in relation to those
youngsters. I can give you example after example of that type
of incident.
Q211 Fiona Mactaggart: You told us
about some of the characteristics of good anti-bullying work in
schools, but I have not really understood whether in your view
the priority should be creating a culture where bullying is diminished
and is not acceptable or dealing with incidents. I have not understood
what the balance should be.
Mr Sinnott: I do not believe that
there is a contradiction between the two. You have to deal with
both. You try to create the culture but if incidents arise you
deal with them appropriately and properly. I do not see there
is a contradiction in terms of how a school should react. The
school has to create that culture and if an incident arises it
must be tackled.
Q212 Fiona Mactaggart: Do all the
teachers in a school know how to do that?
Mr Sinnott: In the best examples,
yes. There are some examples where the policy is a paper one.
We want to ensure that schools undertake various procedures to
ensure that everybody knows what the policy is, that periodically
everybody is involved in reviewing it and that the youngsters
in the school are heavily involved in auditing whether or not
the policy is working. Sometimes it is the auditing that identifies
the problem. You think it is an effective school but the audit
identifies youngsters who say that there is an undercurrent that
you have not detected. One can then take some action.
Professor Smith: I agree that
you need both proactive and reactive aspects to your work on anti-bullying.
The proactive will be general preventive work—citizenship
education and all these things—but you also need to know
how to respond to particular incidents and have an agreed schedule
within your school policy about how to do that, so it is not a
contradiction; you need both.
Q213 Fiona Mactaggart: I suspect
that all of us have been struck by your claim that the ethos of
education and focus on the social and emotional life of children
has diminished. In a way, I thought that that contrasted with
other evidence the Committee has received from the Children's
Commissioner that "using SEAL [social and emotional aspects
of learning] material seems to have been positive in terms of
its ability to generate empathic, pro-social attitudes and to
prevent bullying." In addition, we have a government that
is focusing on the ethos of schools, faith schools and things
like that—the sort of matters that you say are being missed
out. Do you say that the Government's policy is not working?
Mr Sinnott: I think that in certain
areas the Government's policies have not worked, and indeed some
of them have been detrimental to the proper understanding of the
wider range of youngsters' needs. But what I also say—I
wanted to start my evidence on a positive note—is that in
my view a personalised learning agenda creates an opportunity
to reflect what has gone on and the way we can identify within
a school how teachers relate to youngsters and ways in which we
can properly tackle these things. I believe that we are turning
the corner. We will start to see ways in which the nature of what
goes on in a school is less dominated by tests and league tables.
I believe that there is a growing consensus that we have to move
away from that culture in schools and look at the wider range
of educational and welfare issues in schools, and that youngsters
will benefit from a fresh approach to that.
Q214 Fiona Mactaggart: Do you think
the most important thing is that children are happy, not that
they get qualifications?
Mr Sinnott: I think that youngsters
will be in a better position to get good qualifications if they
feel happy and safe within a school.
Q215 Fiona Mactaggart: Professor
Smith, you have talked about research or the lack of it. What
would be the most useful piece of research to give us the information
that we need to improve our work on the issue of bullying?
Professor Smith: Obviously, I
must give a personal answer to that. Other people would have different
views. I believe that the most useful research would be detailed
case studies of particular schools looking at the kinds and range
of sanctions they use and in which circumstances they are used,
trying to pin down in which circumstances certain kinds of approach
work best, or do not work. That is an area where there is a lot
of controversy. It is very important to know what a school's reactive
approach should be when it happens, and we need to know more about
that. I pick that out as my first priority, but there are more
down the line that I could also mention.
Q216 Fiona Mactaggart: We have talked
a lot about prejudice-based bullying, but we have not talked much
about bullying that is utterly unpredictable which seems to be
unconnected to anything. We have heard a lot about workplace bullying.
I am wondering whether somehow the focus on prejudice-based bullying
may imply that there is some reason for bullying and it does not
equip people sufficiently and effectively to deal with random
bullying, if you like. Is this a phenomenon? I have heard about
it occurring in the workplace but not much in schools. What is
your view on that?
Professor Smith: I think it is
good that there has been emphasis on prejudice-based bullying
in the sense of bringing those particular groups into full awareness,
because in the past there was insufficient awareness of, say,
the difficulties experienced by gay people in school. It is absolutely
right that that should be fully brought into awareness; similarly
for people with disabilities and the other kinds of prejudice-based
bullying. We should not neglect the mainstream types of bullying
which may simply arise because somebody behaves a bit differently,
or because someone takes a dislike to somebody else, or because
someone is a bit timid, a bit of a swot or whatever it is. One
important component of anti-bullying work is assertiveness training
which helps everyone, but it could be potential victims, to know
how to cope when they are provoked or attacked in some way. We
all have that experience sometimes. Someone annoys us or it looks
as if he or she will take advantage of us and we have ways of
coping. We get some friends with us; we are assertive back to
them and say we do not like what that individual is doing, and
so on. For some young people that is difficult to do. These things
can help. We cannot rely on that; we must also have the other
kinds of actions as well: peer support and working with the bullying
children. But one component is to help young people to be assertive.
Mr Sinnott: Schools are workplaces,
too, for teachers and support staff. All of those people will
be in positions where we have had reports of bullying and harassment.
I think that it has been wholly beneficial for us properly to
recognise prejudice-based bullying which includes sexist bullying.
Sexism within schools is the theme of a report that we shall be
publishing on Friday. The vast majority of the people who work
within schools are women. I can give some tremendously high statistics
relating to the experiences of women who work within schools.
But it is wholly beneficial for us now to be properly aware with
regard to adults and youngsters within schools that it is inappropriate
to use language, whether or not in a bullying context, that is
thought to be smart but which may be interpreted as damaging to
people, or remarks to do with issues about race or disability
as happened in the past. That is wholly beneficial in order to
create an environment in schools in which everybody feels welcome.
Q217 Fiona Mactaggart: You talked
about schools as being workplaces. I have encountered schools
where my sense is that there is quite a bullying culture about
the way that disciplinary policies are operated. That is sometimes
reflected in bullying among staff which creates a sense of bullying
within the school. Is that something you have encountered? How
can the public, the local authority or whatever, intervene in
something which is pretty seamless and is not talked about or
does not manifest itself very often? Ofsted might uncover it.
Professor Smith: I think you are
right that the general ethos of the school is very important.
I think that it is a matter of raising general awareness about
the issue, empowering people in any position, whether it is pupils,
parents, ordinary teachers or whatever, to speak out if they feel
in any sense that they are being bullied, and probably other things
like Ofsted inspections may also be helpful.
Mr Sinnott: The way in which in
the past some male teachers in particular believed it appropriate
to have discipline within the class or school worked against proper
discipline across the school. A macho approach to dealing with
discipline might be something that a particular male teacher could
use to deal with discipline in his class, but it created a culture
in which those who did not have particular characteristics were
able to operate properly across the school. Some women felt intimidated
by somebody saying, "I don't have any problems in my classroom",
but that individual had particular characteristics which enabled
him to deal with it. Effective discipline policies in schools
now say that that is not the way in which they should he operating;
they should be dealing with discipline in a different way. That
is now old hat and there is a modern approach to dealing with
discipline which is more about creating proper environments and
good relationships within schools.
Q218 Jeff Ennis: Earlier we focused
on the fact that if there was a well developed citizenship education
curriculum in the school and a good anti-bullying policy and well
run school councils in operation that would set the climate for
a good anti-bullying ethos in the school. Given that scenario,
do you think that the Government ought to say as a matter of policy
that every school should have its own school council? I asked
that question of the Children's Minister the other day and she
seemed very reticent in saying that every school should have its
own school council. Do you think it should be compulsory?
Mr Sinnott: I think that every
school should have it and we should ensure that we encourage it
so to do. You might be interested in making a comparison between
England and Wales in these issues because there is a different
approach. Some great work has been done by School Councils UK
on effective school councils and the way they operate, but I emphasise
the word "effective". To make it compulsory is probably
not the right approach. The best approach is to ensure that we
convince people of the effectiveness of the school councils and
that they are developing the structures that meet the needs of
their individual schools.
Professor Smith: I have nothing
to add to that.
Chairman: Thank you very much for this
valuable session. It has been a pleasure to have you in front
of the Committee.
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