Memorandum submitted by Bully Free Zone
Bully Free Zone is a member of the Anti-Bullying
Alliance, a unique collaboration of organisations involved in
anti-bullying work.
Further information about the Anti-Bullying
Alliance is available at www.anti-bullyingalliance.org.uk
This response should be read alongside the Anti-Bullying
Alliance's response.
1. Bully Free Zone is a specialist anti-bullying
organisation, established in February 1996 in response to an identified
need for children and young people to have a specific service
to support them to deal with disputes and conflicts. It is the
North West's leading organisation in this field. It works to provide
support to children who are being bullied or who are bullying
others, and their families, and to educate people about bullying
and its harmful effects. Over the past 10 years it has worked
with thousands of children, young people, parents and professionals.
2. Bully Free Zone provides a range of services
to achieve its aims. These include:
— Bullying Awareness Workshops and
training for children and young people.
— Group work with young people who
exhibit bullying behaviour.
— Support for young people to establish
Peer Support schemes (Buddying/Listening/Mediation) in their own
School, offering other young people the opportunity to access
the help and support they may need.
— Working with Schools to review and
develop their anti-bullying policies and practices.
— Training for other Professionals
involved in working with young people, E.g. School Governors,
Youth Workers, etc.
— A telephone helpline and a Family
Support Project, offering intensive support for children who are
being bullied, and their family. This gives them the opportunity
to access the individual help and support they need.
— Support groups for young people who
have been bullied, teaching coping strategies and helping to raise
their self-esteem.
— Creative projects, allowing young
people to express their feelings about bullying, eg through arts,
drama, and video-making.
3. In April 2005 Bully Free Zone was commissioned
by Bolton Pastoral Network to undertake research around perceptions
and experiences of bullying within Bolton's Secondary Schools.
1,714 young people, from 14 of Bolton's Secondary Schools initially
took part in the research. These young people ranged in age, ethnicity
and background. The full results can be seen on our website, www.bullyfreezone.co.uk
however some of them are detailed in this submission.
4. Only 9% of respondents said that they
had not seen any bullying take place in their school within the
last 12 months. 29.1% of respondents noted that they had seen
bullying take place at least once a week.
5. Respondents were asked about the type
of bullying they had seen or heard about in the past 12 months.
Most reported physical abuse, name-calling, teasing, etc. However
25% said that they had seen or heard of incidents where a weapon
had been used to bully someone; 41.2% had seen/heard of incidents
of homophobia whilst just under 67% had seen/heard of racist incidents.
6. When it came to young people's actual
experiences of bullying, 45.9% of respondents noted that they
had been bullied at least once in the past 12 months. 14.1% had
been bullied in the past week.
7. 784 pupils answered questions about their
own experiences of being bullied. Again, it was mostly name-calling
and teasing, however 36.5% had been physically bullied and 7.5%
(59 respondents) had been threatened or attacked by someone with
a weapon during the past 12 months.
8. When it came to reporting bullying or
seeking help, age appeared to be a key factor. 81.4% of Year 7
pupils stated that if they were being bullied they would talk
to someone, whilst only 53.2% of Year 11 pupils felt the same.
However, when it came to those young people who actually had been
bullied, only 64.7% said that they had told someone. Furthermore,
most of these respondents were female, suggesting that males are
even less likely to tell someone.
9. Of those respondents who had been bullied
and told someone, only 39.1% had actually told a teacher with
many more choosing to tell a parent or a friend. More than half
of the respondents felt that it was not very easy or not at all
easy to talk to a staff member if they were being bullied. Our
own experience in delivering training is that young people know
that they should tell someone if they are being bullied, yet despite
this and despite the Government's "Tell Someone" campaign,
along with our own awareness raising in this area, it appears
that when it actually comes down to it, many young people don't
feel able to tell someone. The most common reason we have heard
for this is because they fear that the bullying will just get
worse.
10. Perhaps the most telling results from
the research though, were around the effects of bullying. More
than half of respondents who had been bullied, stated that they
had considered stopping off school in last 12 months because of
the bullying they had endured. 22.2% said they had actually stayed
off school. In calculating the information they gave, it amounted
to a minimum of 674 days of pupil absence within the last 12 months.
11. Most of the results of this research
came as little surprise. However key issues were identified around
the number of incidents that now seemed to involve weapons, and
the number of school days lost due to bullying.
12. Research suggests that bullying can
impact upon school attendance and also school attainment. The
evidence around lost school days (above) would concur with the
suggested impact upon attendance. This, in turn, would impact
on attainment as the less time that young people spend at school
the more impact it will have on their learning.
13. Bully Free Zone has historically offered
a Peer Support Training Service for schools. We have worked with
many schools in Bolton delivering training to pupils to enable
them to run their own Peer Support (Buddying/Listening/Mediation)
scheme in Schools (Primary and Secondary).
14. Peer Support has worked very well as
a means of offering young people an empowering way of resolving
their issues and problems themselves, helping to raise their self-esteem.
Many schools in our local area will come back to us year after
year to update the training and to train up a new group of pupils
to carry on their support schemes. However, issues arise around
staff and management support and involvement, as well as around
the quality or level of training that may be provided (particularly
when schools deliver the training in-house, as staff then have
to suddenly become "experts" in anti-bullying and peer
support training as well as doing their usual job role).
15. 10 years ago many schools would not
entertain the idea of Peer Support, assuming that it would suggest
that they had "a problem with bullying". Now it is seen
as the "in" thing to have, but that poses problems in
that often Schools will claim to have a Peer Mediation scheme
when they don't even understand what it means. The scheme will
offer little or no mediation and the volunteers will have received
minimal, if any, training.
16. Schools need to give appropriate value
to the methods they adopt. If they choose to have a Peer Mediation
scheme they should ensure that (i) this is what the pupils want,
(ii) those involved receive adequate training, (iii) there are
staff members who are given appropriate responsibility and training
for managing the scheme, and (iv) the Senior Management Team are
fully on board and embrace the idea and see it is an integral
part of the School.
17. Peer Support also needs to be one option
in a range of anti-bullying methods, yet often Schools seem to
think that they are doing enough purely by having an anti-bullying
policy and by having a Peer Support scheme.
18. A whole-school approach is needed to
tackle bullying. Involvement in developing anti-bullying measures
should come from all stakeholders in the school. However, in our
experience this is often not the case. Taking the example of Anti-Bullying
Policies, many Schools will automatically adopt the Local Authority's
standard policy, which will then be placed in a file on a shelf
somewhere. This benefits no-one. Staff do not know what the policy
says and so don't know how to respond to incidents, and pupils
and parents don't know what their rights are—what the school
should be doing.
19. Furthermore, in our experience, when
we advise parents whose children are being bullied to contact
school to request a copy of the Anti-Bullying Policy, their request
is often refused. Schools often become defensive and see the situation
as "them and us", rather than being open and adopting
an approach of everyone working together to resolve issues and
to find solutions that are in the child's best interests.
20. Schools should adopt a whole-school
approach to developing their anti-bullying policy. This should
involve stakeholder consultation at all levels, followed by focus
groups (involving representatives from all stakeholder groups)
who actually work together to develop the policy. The policy should
then be promoted to all interested parties. Pupils could even
work together to develop a jargon-free version of the key points
of the policy. This could form a Code of Conduct that can be displayed
around school so that all pupils can clearly understand what is
expected of them and what they can expect in return. By working
in this way, pupils can take responsibility for their behaviour.
21. In our experience, the understanding
of, and attitude to, bullying can vary greatly amongst teaching
staff. This not only confuses pupils (as they can never be sure
of the response that they will get if they report an incident,)
but it also leads to many staff lacking the confidence or the
knowledge to deal with bullying issues effectively (as staff may
also be confused if they see colleagues responding to bullying
in different ways).
22. Particularly in Primary Schools, some
Head Teachers appear to lack the skills or understanding to deal
effectively with bullying. We have heard of several examples where
parents of children who have been bullied are then told by the
Head Teacher that if they are not happy with the School "maybe
you should consider taking your son/daughter somewhere else".
These Head Teachers appear to be just trying to "pass the
buck" rather than dealing effectively with the issues. This
often also gives the message that it is the child who is being
bullied who has the problem, rather than a behaviour problem with
the child who is bullying.
23. However, again some schools are beginning
to acknowledge that those who bully may benefit from some additional
training and support. Over the past couple of years we have worked
with several schools to provide "Perpetrator's workshops",
supporting young people to examine their behaviour, identify the
impact it can have on others and to consider ways to change their
behaviour. This type of training has been very successful, however
schools must be open to such methods and must be willing to allocate
appropriate time and resources to it.
24. Much work, research and training is
now offered around bullying in Schools, however it is important
to realise that the impact of bullying is much more far-reaching
and that it does not stop at 3.30 pm when a young person walks
through the School gates.
25. Bully Free Zone has always received
telephone calls from concerned parents, worried about their children
who were being bullied. In 2003, in direct response to requests
from our service-users, we established a Family Support Project,
offering intensive support to children and their families. This
project offers a range of support measures: One-to-one discussions,
family discussions, groupwork, courses aimed at raising self-esteem,
a young people's group (supported by young people who are Millennium
Volunteers), creative arts and drama projects aimed at helping
young people express themselves, support for families in dealing
with schools and other agencies, including attending meetings
to help represent their views.
26. Each young person who we speak to experiences
and interprets bullying in a different way. It is for this reason
that no one anti-bullying measure will meet everyone's needs.
We adopt a whole range of measures (see paragraph 2) for working
in and out of school and we tailor each service we provide according
to the specific identified needs of the individual.
27. Many young people who are referred to
us (usually by a concerned parent) are already severely emotionally
affected by the bullying. The effects vary but include lack of
confidence, low self-esteem, depression, eating disorders, self-harm,
running away from home, refusing to go to school, and even suicide
attempts.
One young girl who came to us was so frightened
that, not only was she refusing to go to school, she wouldn't
even leave her house. She essentially became a prisoner in her
own home due to bullying.
28. Parents, too, suffer from the effects
of bullying. Parents who contact us often feel responsible, or
feel like they should be doing something more to help their child.
Often they too need the reassurance and support. If parents are
aware of the problems their child is facing then it can also have
an impact on the whole family.
29. Many parents who contact us feel uneasy
in liasing with their child's school. They usually voice concerns
that their fears are not taken seriously. From the school's point
of view, parents can become angry and upset, laying blame, which
leads to the meeting being counterproductive. Bully Free Zone
offers parents the opportunity of having a worker who will attend
meetings with them. Parents find this service invaluable as they
ensure they are able to express their point of view. However this
service also helps school as the worker will make recommendations
of how everyone can work together in the best interests of the
child.
30. Bully Free Zone have just begun to evaluate
this project as we feel that it could be a model of good practice
that could be replicated in other areas. Initial research would
suggest that there is a distinct lack of this type of out-of-school
support for children and young people and their parents around
bullying.
31. Over the past 10 years we have delivered
training to hundreds of professionals who work with children and
young people—Teachers, Support Staff, Governors, Youth Workers,
Voluntary Sector etc.
32. Again many organisations contact us
as they have decided that they need some training because bullying
is an issue, yet they have not given full consideration to their
organisation's individual issues and needs and they have not looked
at it as part of an overall plan.
33. External organisations and Local Authorities
in particular need to give Voluntary Sector organisations the
recognition they deserve. Some Local Authorities refuse to acknowledge
that there may be local specialist anti-bullying organisations
who have the skills and experience to offer a quality service.
Instead, they establish new training (but often not at the same
level as the staff who deliver this service often do so on top
of their existing job role).
34. As a registered charity that has provided
anti-bullying services for 10 years we are well aware of the needs
of the communities that we service. Unfortunately funding becomes
a major issue and dramatically limits the services we can offer.
Grant funders no longer want to fund projects that they know will
work, instead they all want new, innovative projects. This leads
to serious issues when it comes to trying to get funding to continue
and develop our much-needed service.
35. As a result, we are now in a position
whereby we must charge schools and other organisations for our
training. In our local area this is a problem, particularly in
Primary Schools as falling roll numbers has led to reduced budgets,
and often other initiatives take priority. Schools often expect
that charities will provide services for free, without recognising
that we need the funding to be able to continue.
RECOMMENDATIONS
36. Schools need to have a whole-school
approach to tackling bullying. This means that the Senior Management
Team must ensure that anti-bullying is given full consideration
in their school.
Examples of this would include: whole stake-holder
(pupils, staff, parents, community) involvement in developing
an anti-bullying policy which would include proactive as well
as reactive measures to tackling bullying; anti-bullying included
in various areas of the curriculum; staff undertake anti-bullying
training; bullying incidents are recorded and monitored, etc.
37. School staff (including support staff)
need to have regular updated training around dealing with bullying
and behaviour issues so that everyone feels confident in dealing
with it.
38. Schools should consider having an Anti-bullying
Co-ordinator—someone who has leadership responsibility for
overseeing how bullying incidents are dealt with as well as developing
anti-bullying policy and practice. This does not necessarily have
to be a member of school staff, for example, some schools in our
local area are currently considering joining together to commission
Bully Free Zone to provide this type of service for their cluster.
39. Schools should develop an Anti-Bullying
Strategy Team in the same way that many schools now have School
Councils or Healthy Schools Teams. Anti-Bullying should not just
be discussed during National Anti-Bullying Week, but events and
promotion should be developed year-round to continue to raise
awareness.
40. Schools need to link in and utilise
the services of organisations such as ourselves so that if they
identify a child who is being bullied, they can ensure that ongoing
support is available for them outside of school as well as in
school.
41. Local Authorities should create much
better links with specialist organisations in the voluntary sector.
Under best value they should consider whether it is most appropriate
to develop an additional Local Authority service around bullying
or whether to use the skills and experience that already available
(and well-regarded) within the voluntary sector.
October 2006
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