The DCSF propose to introduce a duty on schools to record incidents of bullying and incidents of cyber, physical or verbal abuse against school staff. Ministers announced on 26 September 2008.their vision for enabling schools to respond more effectively to bullying by making it compulsory for incidents to be properly recorded.
Schools will be required to introduce recording systems to monitor, respond and promote the anti-bullying work of the school, keeping parents, pupils and governors fully informed about bullying issues. Such records they suggest will provide defensible decision making in response to any complaints. This links to the safeguarding duty on schools so many schools will already have such systems in place.
The DCSF is asking whether there are:
Ø any reasons why recording incidents by type (race, disability, etc) would be problematic for schools?
Ø If, so what support would schools need?
Ø Would a single system be able to cope with both recording bullying and recording incidents relevant to school staff?
Ø Would it be appropriate to record all this data within a single system?
What counts as bullying is in Safe to Learn 1.6-1.7) Actions which cause distress to others.
Bullying includes: (mainly repetitive) name-calling; taunting; mocking; making offensive comments; kicking; hitting; pushing; taking belongings; inappropriate text messaging and emailing; sending offensive or degrading images by phone or via the internet; producing offensive graffiti; gossiping; excluding people from groups; and spreading hurtful and untruthful rumours’.
The Department is currently not suggesting that incidents are reported to Local Authorities, but some organisations would like to see this made statutory too.
There are obvious issues here around resources and workload. Please let me have your thoughts on the above; you can contact me (Jan Myles) by email: janm@naht.org.uk
