Bedminster Down School is leading the way on tackling bullying. Recently, Ben Wills, assistant headteacher, was invited to the House of Lords to discuss how the school has successfully tackled bullying and to promote the work of the Anti-Bullying Alliance.
The school participated in an Anti-Bullying Alliance pilot scheme to develop a comprehensive and robust anti-bullying programme. With the alliance’s help, the school collected high-quality data about bullying and perceived bullying. This enabled them to respond strategically to student concerns and worries promptly and proportionately. The alliance also helped the school implement interventions for bullying targets and ringleaders.
The outcome? Student voice has been very positive about the impact of this programme.
In the spirit of sharing and collaboration, Ben kindly shared six tips for dealing with bullying in your school.
- Have a clear definition of bullying that is easily understood and consistently applied by all school community members.
- Have a clear understanding of the roles within group bullying behaviours and train students to recognise these and act positively to defend the targets of bullying.
- The anti-bullying policy should be easy to understand (with a child-friendly version) and implement.
- There should be multiple ways to report bullying that all school community members can access. This feeds into a triage system that can hold staff accountable and ensures that students’ concerns are dealt with promptly.
- Reporting methods for perceived bullying allow you to collect high-quality quantitative and qualitative data. Then, you can focus interventions where they are most needed and pre-empt issues in your school using the data collected.
- Do not be afraid to talk about anti-bullying, as this builds a culture of understanding and an expectation that it will be dealt with effectively.
