Tackle bullying

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CONCLUSIONS

The findings of this research project indicated that, when thinking about how to respond to bullying, children and young people engaged in a complex process of risk assessment. Pupils identified a number of different ways of tackling bullying and explored the anticipated advantages and disadvantages of each option. No tidy solutions or easy remedies were identified. Consequently, pupils’ discussions about ‘what works’ in tackling bullying might more accurately be re-framed as ‘what might work’.
Although it is common for adults to encourage pupils to report bullying, pupils of both age groups expressed a preference for ‘sorting it out’ and ‘standing up for themselves’. Alternative strategies necessary involved pupils in the dilemmas and consequences associated with ‘telling’. It appears that, even if pupils decided to ‘tell’ an adult, they were very aware of the gap between how teachers and parents should respond to bullying and how they actually respond. A pupil in Year 5 had this insight to offer on ‘telling’ and its aftermath:
‘If the dinner ladies don’t help you, tell your teacher. If the teacher doesn’t help you, tell you mum. Then your mum will tell the headmistress. Then the headmistress will go and tell the parents of the bully. And the parents of the bully (pause)...well, some of the parents don’t care and just say ‘don’t do it again’. (Boy, Year 5).
In listening to children and young people talk about bullying, it is clear that they received a number of mixed messages from adults (teachers and parents). These mixed messages might be summarized:
• Adults (teachers and parents) claimed that bullying was a serious or ‘bad’ thing but pupils experience was that bullying was often dismissed as ‘child’s play’
• Pupils were encouraged to report incidents of bullying but when they did, pupils frequently felt that they were not listened to
• Schools encouraged pupils to report bullying but were also perceived by pupils as unable to protect them from retaliatory action, particularly after school hours
• Teaching involves working and forming relationships with pupils, yet often, teachers were perceived as taking complaints made by parents more seriously than complaints made by pupils
• Adults (teachers and parents) claimed that they could be trusted but telling an adult about bullying was perceived as involving a risk that they would break promises of confidentiality
• Adults often told pupils not to fight back, but pupils found that fighting back works sometimes.
These findings suggest that anti-bullying policies might be expected to have limited effect if they fail to take into account the realities of the child’s social world. For older pupils in particular, the risks of ‘telling’ an adult were identified as involving a risk to their self-esteem, and as increasing their vulnerability to bullying. In these circumstances, it is hardly surprising that pupils expressed a desire to ‘sort things out’ for themselves and to take action according to their perceptions of the power dynamics in operation around them. Older pupils in particular identified a wish to have more control over how teachers responded to reported incidents of bullying that involved them personally. For these reasons, it would seem appropriate for schools to consider more ‘bottom up’ rather than (‘top down’) responses to bullying that attempt to involve pupils in decision-making at an individual and school-wide level.
It is also clear that encouraging a child ‘to tell’ requires an adult willingness to listen. Often, pupils expressed a wish simply to speak to an adult in confidence in order to unburden themselves, get advice and support and to consider their options. Importantly, there were hardly any disadvantages and some considerable benefits associated with such a course of action, particularly in relation to pupils’ emotional well-being. Certainly, taking such action might provide a useful starting point for pupils to decide for themselves the likely costs and benefits of ‘telling’ a teacher or parent.
Nevertheless, the findings indicated that anti-bullying policies provided a useful starting point for tackling bullying. Indeed, some pupils highlighted different approaches that were described as working at least some of the time (e.g. Schools Councils, ABCs, discussing bullying regularly during assemblies and during class time). Pupils also recommended that anti bullying initiatives should be sustained over the long term.
In summary, the findings highlighted the importance of:
• developing anti-bullying strategies that start with pupils’ experiences of bullying and take into account the consequences of ‘telling’ for children and young people
• providing accessible sources of confidential advice and support
• adopting a sustained and multi-model approach to bullying in recognition of children’s perceptions that some courses of action work some of the time and that there are no sure or single solutions to the problem of bullying.