9th January 2019 9:00
By Blue Tutors
A university professor has said that there should be a national strategy to tackle bullying, rather than leaving it to individual schools. Reported on the BBC, Professor Judy Hutchings from Bangor University has used Finland as an example where a blanket strategy reduced reports of bullying by 40%.
Currently 10% of school students are bullied on a weekly basis and significantly more over a two month period. The idea would be to ask schools to record every incident of bullying, but also to avoid there being any kind of league table.
The scheme in Finland was called KiVa and focussed on helping bullies and bystanders to recognise incidents of bullying to help prevent them. It doesn’t place any onus on victims to change their behaviour. It includes a survey, lessons on bullying, online games and parents’ evening.
So far the system is only being considered in Wales, and reactions have been positive. However, teachers are keen for the information to be used only to tackle bullying. There are fears that parents could begin to use the statistics to make a decision about to which school to send their child. Statutory recording of bullying should be seen as a positive thing, rather than a school which ignores incidents which they don’t believe are important.