Developing Healthy Attitudes

DHA Home SWR Home Bereavement Body Image & Self-Esteem Bullying Child Marriage Children in Care & Care Leavers Child Sexual Exploitation Domestic Abuse Eating Disorders Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) Gambling Hate Crime & Hate Incidents Healthy Relationships Honour Based Abuse Housing & Supported Accommodation LGBT+ Young People Menstruation Mental Health Online Safety Sexual Health Smoking inc. Vaping Substance Use/Misuse Virginity Testing Young Carers Youth Crime

Bullying

Overview

Bullying can take many forms but it usually includes the following types of behaviour:

• Physical: Hitting, kicking, pinching, punching, scratching, spitting or any other form of physical attack.
• Verbal: This is the most common form of bullying. It includes name-calling; insulting; remarks which can also be prejudice related for example racist, sexist, homophobic, bi phobic, transphobic or disability related; jokes; teasing; using sexually suggestive or abusive language.
• Indirect: Spreading nasty stories about someone; exclusion from social groups and being made the subject of malicious rumours.
• Cyber: Any type of bullying that is carried out by an electronic medium, for example : text message; picture/video clip; phone; e-mail; chat-room , Instant Messaging (IM), Social Networking sites and bullying via websites.

Bullying can last for a short period or go on for years and is an abuse of power by those who carry it out. It is sometimes premeditated, sometimes opportunistic, sometimes occurs randomly and sometimes serially.

Bullying relies on bystander (observers, onlookers, watchers) doing nothing to stop the bullying or becoming actively involved in supporting it.

Bullying can happen to anyone.

The Anti-Bullying Alliance includes the following principles in its definition of bullying:

• Bullying behaviour deliberately causes hurt (either physically or emotionally).
• Bullying behaviour is repetitive (though one-off incidents such as the posting of an image, or the sending of a text that is then forwarded to a group, can quickly become repetitive and spiral into bullying behaviour).
• Bullying behaviour involves an imbalance of power (the person on the receiving end feels like they can’t defend themselves).

Bullying is not:

• Teasing and banter between friends without intention to cause hurt (although bullying can be misrepresented as banter).
• Falling out between friends after a quarrel or disagreement.
• Behaviour that all parties have consented to and enjoy (note coercion can be very subtle).

Bullying can last for a short period or go on for years and is an abuse of power by those who carry it out. It is sometimes premeditated, sometimes opportunistic, sometimes occurs randomly and sometimes serially.

Bullying relies on bystander (observers, onlookers, watchers) doing nothing to stop the bullying or becoming actively involved in supporting it.

Specific types of bullying include:

• Homophobic, biphobic and transphobic bullying because of someone’s sexual orientation or sexual identity
• Racist bullying because of someone’s skin colour
• Religious bullying because of someone’s belief or faith (including having no belief)
• Sizeist bullying because of someone’s body size
• Sexist bullying because of a person being of the opposite sex
• Appearance related bullying because of appearance
• Cyberbullying targeting people online, often anonymously
• SEN/Disability bullying because of a disability or learning difficulties

Bullying can make young people feel isolated and worthless, lonely, anxious, angry and lacking confidence. Signs of bullying include:

• Truanting/absenteeism
• Becoming withdrawn
• Tearfulness
• Distress
• Loss of appetite
• Avoiding people/situations
• Self harm
• Anxiety
• Depression
• Taking drugs or drinking alcohol
• Thoughts of suicide
• Decreased performance in school work for unexplained reasons
• Refusing to say what’s wrong

Key Facts

• There were over 25,700 Childline counselling sessions with children about bullying last year. Source: NSPCC (2016)
• More than 16,000 young people are absent from school due to bullying Source: Brown, V., Clery, E. and Ferguson, C. (2011)
• There were over 11,000 counselling sessions with young people who talked to Childline about online issues last year Source: NSPCC (2016)

Key findings from the UK Annual Bullying Survey 2016 by anti bullying charity Ditch the Label include:

• 1.5 million young people (50%) have been bullied within the past year.
• 145,800 (19%) of these were bullied EVERY DAY.
• People who have been bullied are almost twice as likely to bully others
• 57% of female respondents have been bullied, 44% of male respondents and 59% of respondents who identified as trans have been bullied.
• 24% of those who have been bullied go on to bully.
• Twice as many boys as girls bully (66% of males vs. 31% females).
• 44% of young people who have been bullied experience depression.
• 41% of young people who have been bullied experience social anxiety.
• 33% of those being bullied have suicidal thoughts

Source: Ditch the Label 2016

Best Practice Resources

The Department of Education has produced guidance on preventing and tackling bullying.

Government produced good practice case studies on managing behaviour and bullying.

Stonewall have produced toolkits for preventing and tackling homophobic, biphobic and transphobic bullying in primary schools and secondary schools.

The Anti Bullying Alliance has produced a Tools and Information section about all things bullying.

The Legal Dimension

The Equality Act 2010
The Public Sector Equality Duty under the Equality Act 2010 requires all schools in England to eliminate discrimination; promote equality of opportunity and foster good relations, this means schools need to tackle and prevent bullying.

Education and Inspections Act 2006
Schools have a duty to promote the safety and well-being of all children and young people in their care which means clear responsibilities in responding to bullying.

Human Rights Act 1998
Schools could be challenged under the Human Rights Act 1998, if they allow the rights of children and young people that they work with to be breached through failing to take bullying seriously.

Safeguarding children and young people
Under the Children Act 1989 a bullying incident should be addressed as a safeguarding concern when there is ‘reasonable cause to suspect that a child is suffering, or is likely to suffer, significant harm’.

Criminal law
Although bullying in itself is not a specific criminal offence in the UK, some types of harassing, threatening behaviour or communications could be a criminal offence.

Bullying outside school premises
The Education and Inspections Act 2006 gives Headteachers the power to regulate pupils’ conduct when they are not on school premises and are not under the lawful control or charge of a member of school staff. This can relate to any bullying incidents occurring anywhere off the school premises, such as on school or public transport, outside the local shops, or in a town or village centre.

Ofsted
Ofsted inspections explore how schools prevent and tackle bullying, and will explore how the school meets its statutory duty to prevent all forms of prejudice based bullying and language.

References

Brown, Victoria, Elizabeth Clery, and Christopher Ferguson. “Estimating the prevalence of young people absent from school due to bullying.” Nat Centre Soc Res 1 (2011): 1-61.