Bullying in Schools (Hansard, 19 February 1998)

§ The Minister of State, Department for Education and Employment (Baroness Blackstone)
My Lords, the Government attach a high priority to helping prevent and combat bullying. We are planning several initiatives, including an international conference to explore strategies successfully used in various countries to tackle bullying, and further guidance to schools building on my department's anti-bullying pack published in 1994. We will also be taking more active steps to spread information on good practice in combating the problem.

§ Lord Ashley of Stoke
My Lords, I welcome my noble friend's Answer. However, is she aware that the Government have not gone as far as they could have done before the international conference? Bullying is causing enormous damage to children; it even leads to suicides. Will my noble friend consider a proposal under which an annual report must be presented to the Minister by every school on its anti-bullying policy? Does she agree that there should be a requirement on every school to present to the Minister what has or has not been done? Will she further consider a league table so that everyone knows which are the good and bad schools in relation to bullying? If that is done, we shall have more information about the anti-bullying policies of schools and about those schools which are failing to do anything about the matter.

§ Baroness Blackstone
My Lords, I entirely agree with my noble friend when he says that bullying is totally unacceptable. It can certainly scar a child for life and do terrible damage. I am confident that the vast majority of schools have adopted an anti-bullying strategy and do take the matter very seriously. However, where schools are not doing as well as they should in this respect we must do something about it. My right honourable friend the Secretary of State recently lent his support to a number of anti-bullying campaigns. We expect school development policies to reflect proper anti-bullying strategies. To publish statistics in the form of a league table, to use my noble friend's term, would he difficult. Clearly, there are many definitions as to 306 what constitutes bullying. It is therefore very hard to collect statistics. What is important is that we take action.

§ Baroness Gardner of Parkes
My Lords, I normally agree with proposals advanced by the noble Lord, Lord Ashley. I do not agree that there is any great value in publishing tables. The only tables we should see would be from schools where bullying is a known and acknowledged problem. Does the Minister agree that the greatest difficulty is discovering where bullying goes on? What can be done to improve discovery and to give children who are bullied the courage to come forward and say it is happening? Should we not give teachers the responsibility of accepting that this practice is going on and of listening carefully to what the bullied child is saying?

§ Baroness Blackstone
Yes, my Lords, I agree very much with the noble Baroness's comments. It would he difficult to produce either valid or reliable statistics. I can see all sorts of ways in which those schools that had identified bullying would then want to try to underestimate it. And there would be schools which had not discovered it. It is important that we get all schools, their governing bodies and staff to take the problem very seriously and work together with parents to try to root it out. Parents have a big role to play. When they are concerned that their child is being bullied, it is important for them to talk to the child about it and then take the matter up with the teaching staff of the school. In that way we shall make some progress.

§ Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
My Lords, does my noble friend agree that it often comes down to a question of leadership and that where head teachers recognise that there is a problem and are prepared to take decisive action it is possible to remove much bullying from schools? The problem arises when head teachers refuse to see the problem and do not listen to parents, thus allowing bullying to become a serious matter in those schools. Does the Minister accept that in the training and development of head teachers there is a need to give a particular focus to the issue of bullying?

§ Baroness Blackstone
My Lords, yes. As in all matters where schools are concerned, the leadership of head teachers is central. I accept what my noble friend says. The training of head teachers should include consideration of how to intervene to prevent bullying wherever it occurs. That kind of training should be available, I believe to every classroom teacher as well. It is, after all, the classroom teacher who is most likely to be able to observe bullying and pick it up. Of course, head teachers must do their best to make sure their staff take the matter seriously.

§ Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos
My Lords, is it not the case that bullying is at its least in church schools? Is there not a lesson there?

§ Baroness Blackstone
My Lords, I was not aware that there was less bullying in church schools than in 307 county schools. If my noble friend can provide evidence of that, we shall look into it and see what we have to learn from church schools.

§ Baroness Carnegy of Lour
My Lords, following on from that point, does the Minister agree that the important factor is that the whole atmosphere of the school is right and that the hidden curriculum of the school should be one of good relationships, one person to another, and kindness to one another? If bullying can be seen as going against the atmosphere of the school, it is easier to stop it.

§ Baroness Blackstone
My Lords, yes, I agree entirely with the noble Baroness, Lady Carnegy of Lour. It is a whole-school policy that is required. It is the ethos of the school that is important, so that all children and young people understand that bullying is intolerable and completely unacceptable behaviour.

§ Lord Ashley of Stoke: My Lords, does my noble friend agree with the following two propositions? First, studies have shown definitions of bullying
there is no problem about that. Secondly, if we can name and shame schools with regard to school standards, we can name and shame them with regard to bullying, which is an equally serious problem.

§ Baroness Blackstone
My Lords, I do not entirely agree with my noble friend that definitions of bullying are very easy. Bullying can be psychological as well as physical. It can be difficult to identify until some time after it has begun. Certainly, if we were to discover that serious bullying was going on in particular schools with no effort being made to address the matter we should do something to identify the failure of those schools in that regard.