Government and teacher views on bullying

30/03/2008 by Tony Attwood.

The Secretary of State for Education has accepted recommendations that all secondary schools should join behaviour partnerships.  He also announced new plans for a White Paper to change the alternative provision for pupils who have been excluded from school.  He also announced plans to tackle cyber bullying of teachers.

According to speakers at the NASUWT Union conference this Easter disruptive pupils are  ruining thousands of students’ life chances and are the biggest cause of stress among teachers.   One speaker said that diagnosing students as having ADHD was used as a reason not to exclude that student from school.  Others said that behaviour was becoming increasingly “audacious” including abuse on the street, harassment by email and pupils standing outside teachers’ homes shouting abuse.    As a result of legislation passed since the 2005 Report of the Practitioners’ Group on School Behaviour and Discipline, schools now have:

• statutory power to discipline children and impose sanctions for breaches of school rules;
• statutory power to confiscate;
• statutory power to impose discipline beyond the school site, for example for bad behaviour on the journey to and from school;
• a completely new power to search pupils for weapons including knives;
• statutory power to use physical force to restrain unruly pupils; and
• new rules on exclusion appeals panels.

the Secretary of State now intends to go further, in these areas… 

• accepting that all schools, including all new academies, should be required to be part of behaviour partnerships - all existing academies have also now agreed to be part of behaviour partnerships, and the overwhelming majority of LEA schools are in partnerships.
• plans to write to all Directors of Children’s Services to make sure that the additional £109.5 million for Parent Support Advisers is targeted at schools with the highest need; and
• plans for a White Paper to see a transformation in the quality of alternative provision, including plans for more voluntary and private sector provision such as high quality vocational training and studio schools.

Also a Task Force, which will be chaired by Kevin Brennan and will have representatives from social networking sites and teachers, will develop ideas for preventing and dealing with such abuse.  The Secretary of State is asking the Task Force to report its conclusions by July. In particular he has asked them to consider:

a - What more we can do to ensure all school staff and heads are aware of the powers available to them and use them effectively;
b - What more we can do to ensure that all schools have discipline policies that minimise abuse of teachers and anti-bullying policies that protect all their staff from cyberbullying;
c - Whether we should establish a national point of call where school staff can direct complaints about abusive material;
d - Whether we should have specific guidance for staff who have experienced internet abuse;
e - How we can best work with industry to address cyberbullying of teachers;
f - How best to explain the impact of cyberbullying to parents and their responsibilities to ensure that it is treated as seriously as other forms of bullying. Where cyberbullies are found guilty, their parents should be shown what the offence was.

Background notes

1. In the Children’s Plan there was a commitment to ask Sir Alan Steer to review progress since his 2005 report and to look at making behaviour partnerships compulsory.

2. Alan Steer’s initial response can be found at: http://www.dcsf.gov.uk/behaviourandattendance

3. The 2005 Report of the Practitioners’ Group on School Behaviour and Discipline, chaired by Sir Alan Steer, can be found at: http://www.dcsf.gov.uk/behaviourandattendance/about/learning_behaviour.cfm

4. The additional £109.5 million for Parent Support Advisers was announced in November.

5. Later this spring DCSF will be making a curriculum resource pack called Let’s Fight It Together available to schools. The pack is being produced by Childnet. Vodafone and O2 are helping to fund it, which is clear evidence of support from the industry. The pack, which include a short film, will help teachers work with pupils in lessons and assemblies to develop their understanding of the impact of cyberbullying and how to prevent it. Lets Fight It Together emphasises that pupils are not the only victims. The internet can also be used to harass, bully and abuse teachers and other school staff, and we are determined to take decisive action to stop this.

Tony Attwood

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