Memorandum submitted by Maura McHale
I am very pleased that you are taking this seriously
and looking into it.
I am a mother and teacher in a primary school
and have witnessed bullying.
Firstly, as identified in Every Child Matters
and numerous other enquiries into how a child can be tortured
to death with apparently no adult being able to prevent it—the
key issue is exchange of information amongst adults. I was very
disappointed that you did not canvass all schools when looking
into this problem—preferably a secret/anonymous form for
children to complete.
In my experience bullying occurs when the adults
employed to take responsibility for children let themselves off
this responsiblity by saying (1) children have got to learn to
stand up for themselves, (2) it happened to them when they were
at school—and never did them any harm (3) it is impossible
to stop.
It is completely unacceptable that children
spend their young lives in fear and many kill themselves because
adults can't put themselves in children's shoes.
I would like to see compulsory home/school agreements
with the behaviour policy of the school given to every pupil and
parent. There should also be a member of staff responsible for
setting up and policing either a school council, peer mediation
etc and this should be something which Ofsted and/or the Govenors
of private and state schools are obliged to set up and police.
Circle time at the moment is often taught by reluctant staff with
no empathy for the subject. Some form of emotional literacy should
be part of the curriculum, but taught by people from outside the
school.
I think that a definition is difficult and we
probably need something to describe behaviour which is niggling
but needs to be monitored before it erupts into bullying.
I very much hope that you produce something
which will make a real impact on this problem.
3 October 2006
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