Letter: Schools must get tough on bullying

Monday 4th July 2011, 6:00AM BST.

Letter: In reply to C Williams, our daughter has been bullied at school for the last two years and had reported over 89 incidents of bullying. The school’s reply was if there are no witnesses, we can’t do anything.

We agree with C Williams that it does not take long for the defence brigade to step in and try to protect the school. It does this by pushing bullying issues under the carpet; first by the headmaster, who thinks a problem is solved by the victim leaving the school – this was also the feeling of the chairman of governors.

When this does not work, the defence brigade come up with the idea to isolate the victim from the rest of the school, so that it keeps them out of the reach of the bullies. The bullies never have to alter their routine.

We e-mailed our school’s chairman of governors, with concerns that the bullying was having a big effect on our daughter’s health. We received a reply by mistake, that was intended for the headmaster, marked “for your information only”, stating he would reply to our e-mail later and he had put in brackets “if ever”.

Official complaints again- st the head or chairman of governors are heard by a co- mmittee selected by the ch- airman, which does not reassure you the complaint will be taken seriously. You can also forget the LEA, it finds it easier to back the school.

It’s about time schools remember the lasting damage bullying does to a child.

Name and address supplied

1
Port Hill Boy

July 4, 2011 at 11:04

You appear to be getting nowhere so you should up the ante and show the correspondence to the media. They can keep your child anonymous but identify the arrogant school and its arrogant chair of governors.

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- Jane small
  
  July 4, 2011 at 19:20
  
  Yes, i agree with you Port Hill Boy. so come on the Shropshire Star, show us the arrogant school and its chair of Governors.
  
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2
Sandra

July 4, 2011 at 11:11

I had to remove my sons from a school due to bullying problems, the incompetent headmistress’s solution was that it was my son’s fault. The deputy head also lied about a physical incident that both my sons and several other children witnessed.
The police were useless. They told me any physical assaults on school grounds stayed in the school.
My advice to you is get a decent solicitor and press charges against the school for failing to protect your child from physical abuse. Because I wish I had.

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3
Bunch o'Fives

July 4, 2011 at 12:45

I was bullied at school in the mid 1960s and none of the teachers were interested in helping. My dad said “Next time, hit the little b*****d”. So next time, I hit the b*****d across the school hall and knocked the living daylights out of him. No teacher intervened (they knew the bully had it coming) and neither the bully nor his mates bothered me again.

Bullies are essentially cowards and sometime a bunch of fives is the only answer.

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- Andy
  
  July 4, 2011 at 13:38
  
  Same here, fives…
  
  Got some issue from three lads a year older than me. Dad showed me how to fight dirty. Next time they picked on me put one in hospital with a testicular injury and another packed off to the dentist, the third one ran away. I still to this day hope I managed to stop the fat one from reproducing :)
  
  Never bullied again, and I was tiny for my age.
  
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- JOHN JONES
  
  July 4, 2011 at 22:23
  
  What sound advice your father gave you. There is no such thing as bullying, Its called growing up.Like my own late fathers wise words to me, “hit them first and hard” and they will not come back for more, and he was right.
  
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  - spencer
    
    July 5, 2011 at 09:50
    
    My Dad told me ” the bigger they are the harder they fall “. After several sound beatings i soon realised this wasn’t very sound advice at all.
    
    Oh, there is such a thing as bullying by the way and its not nice..
    
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  - ANDREW FINCH
    
    July 5, 2011 at 12:44
    
    Has a point. The best advise though is if the bullying is persistent and not just a one off incident the best way to deal with it because the school will not , is go to the home of the bully and request that they stop the child they have bred from bullying your child, if they do not listen then do to the parent what their child does to yours .
    
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4
CJ

July 4, 2011 at 13:33

loco parentis
[Latin, The place of a parent.] A description of the relationship that an adult or an institution assumes toward an infant or minor of whom the adult is not a parent but to whom the adult or institution owes the obligation of care and supervision.
Are these teachers really adhering to this statement for the said bullied children? Think not. Different kettle of fish when the bullied child retaliates and through sheer stress belts the bully back, it then becomes all their fault and they get labeled and punished.

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5
Matt

July 4, 2011 at 16:26

But the school can claim “zero bullying” because there were no witnesses.

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6
ANDREW FINCH

July 4, 2011 at 17:36

NO school will ever admit to bullying being a problem in their school, as sure as day follows night, in fact tell me of any school in the uk who has said they have had a problem with bullying?. I am aware of 3 children who were told to move from the same school because of this, this in turn makes the victim believe they are some how to blame, the bully walks away scot free and the heads reputation for having a bully free school remains intact .

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7
james

July 5, 2011 at 10:40

I have much sympathy with the letter-writers here. Response No 3 (and the first 2 replies)seem to miss the point that nowhere do the writers even imply that their daughter has been physically bullied. There are many other forms ; verbal, exclusion, cyber-bullying etc.

It’s a sad fact that this is an issue that’s been downplayed, or swept under the carpet, for far too long.

One school I worked at in the late 90s did have a fairly comprehensive strategy called ‘No Blame’. The idea was that a student who felt he/she was being bullied would go to a trained member of staff and report the incident(s) in as much detail as he/she felt able.

The teacher would then gather together a group of 8-10 students, including the bully/bullies, friends, neutral classmates etc and describe the whole situation to the group but without saying who was responsible -the focus all being on the feelings of the ‘victim’. The group would then agree on some action to take in order to help the person who was bullied.

There were advantages to this, some of them quite surprising :

1. Because the strategy was ‘whole school’, students felt encouraged to report incidents.
2. Staff acted on every incident. (This was time-consuming but, provided the bullies were named, there was no need for ‘witnesses’ as such and cases could be acted on quite quickly.)
3. The ‘victim’s’ friends and classmates had the chance to give moral support.
4. The bully/bullies very often implicated themselves – in some cases displaying a surprising degree of empathy/remorse.

The disadvantage was the lack of long-term impact on the bullies’ behaviour – the strategy didn’t stop many of them re-offending, sometimes after just a few days.

Ultimately, the best I can say for it, and this is a sad indictment of both schools and society as a whole, is that it was the ‘least inadequate’ anti-bullying strategy I’ve seen.

Andrew is probably right in suggesting that most schools (I’d disagree with ‘no school’) won’t even admit they have a problem.

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- Andy
  
  July 5, 2011 at 20:09
  
  James, a fantastic reply and very very true.
  
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8
chloe

July 5, 2011 at 12:47

I was an A-level student who has been rejected from my second year due to me having a stage 2 disciplinary. Reasons for this title are the fact that I got bullied, it was little things like my pen being taken, chalk on my chair, spat out food on my desk like sweets…. it got worse and the abuse was then on Facebook statuses and the social group would comment saying things about us. an argument in the corridor led to all 5 of us involved on a stage 2, yet we were the victims…. they said the same at college, no witnesses we can’t do anything, i gave website evidence, wrote statements and yet they did nothing. I left school hoping I wouldn’t be bullied in college and have no help, yet the same happened at my college, they didn’t enforce correct procedures to helping us.

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9
eva land

July 5, 2011 at 15:04

Teachers are not capable of preventing bullying amongst each other never mind the students.

[My advice to you is get a decent solicitor and press charges against the school for failing to protect your child from physical abuse. Because I wish I had.]

I agree so much Sandra.
I deeply regret not moving my son from his secondary school after he was assaulted and taunted by ten pupils on his way home only six weeks after starting there.

It affected him for years until he stopped being the victim in his final year and hit back for which he he was told he would have to attend anger management courses.
He left with good academic results but they were mainly down to him and his never going out at breaks, staying in the library whenever he could because of the bullying. We were never informed of anything including that he could have sat an examination for Oxford. He only told us that years later.

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10
Andy

July 5, 2011 at 20:07

Schools are responsible for the welfare of the children who attend. The Government should intervene and create a policy whereby bullies are named, shamed and dealt with by police.
To hear that a headmaster had commented “If ever”, shows how incompetent and uncaring he is. Schools, dont brush this issue under the carpet, it needs priority and nipping in the bud at the time of the incident.
I was bullied at school in the 70′s/80′s and the Birmingham school I attended were pathetic and turned a blind eye. John Jones, you have done it again. There IS such a thing as bullying, dictionaries even refer to it….

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