Bullying

As a deputy head one of the things which I often have to deal with is incidents of bullying. This has become a very emotional word which is bandied around very quickly.

Some parents and children seem to regard any individual act of unpleasantness as "bullying". Clearly it is part of my role to deal with these unpleasant acts but that doesn't make them bullying.

If we use the "B" word too loosely it can be quite harmful because it can disguise the real incidents which are so important for us to address. Bullying clearly involves persistent behaviour. However, just like a rugby player can get a yellow card if for his first offence if his team has been persistently offending, there can be occasions when a single action by a pupil can amount to bullying if he is targeting a child who is on the receiving end of this sort of behaviour.

This was brought home to me by the reactions of a number of parents of boys involved in just this sort of incident at lunchtime yesterday. One boy is unfortunately on the receiving end of regular low level bullying and 3 others came to see me to tell me that they were quite concerned for him but that he would just say that it was OK. I could see that the 3 who were reporting it were really trying to help and knew I had to do something.

At first the victim tried to say that nothing had happened but after a while he did tell me almost exactly the same as the 3 who had reported what was going on.

I then spoke to the 3 culprits, and to their credit, their stories were almost identical too. They hadn't been regularly involved but I did tell them that the fact that the victim was regularly being picked on, and they knew it, meant that they were part of the bullying. They all accepted the fact that they deserved to be punished and I am sure they will go out of their way to help because they are good lads at heart.

However, it was amazing to receive an email from one of their parents really concerned about the fact that I had said that his son had been a bully. Unpalatable to this parent as it might have been I do believe that a single act can be bullying and think that this parent and I will have to agree to disagree.