Anti-Bullying Network - "Bullying at School"

8 MARCH 2003 - Beardsmore Conference Hotel in Clydebank

Report by Susan McColl

 8 MARCH 2003 - Beardsmore Conference Hotel in Clydebank

Report by Susan McColl

This conference was held at the Beardsmore Conference Hotel in Clydebank. It was a great location with a cosy conference chamber which was perfect for about a hundred people and clean, modern rooms. Lunch was delicious, with efficient and friendly service. Since the conference was subsidised by West Dumbarton Council the fee was £10 - affordable for interested parents - made more so by the generous offer of the SPTC to pay for fifty parents.

The keynote speaker was Dr Brendan Byrne, a charismatic man of many hats - teacher, counsellor, parent, researcher and author. His presentation was ‘spot on’ covering all aspects of bullying.

Dr Byrne started by talking about the warning signals that your child may be a victim of bullying. For primary children, these could include cruelty towards siblings and animals, children asking to be taken to school or making up illness which clears up mid morning, nightmares and bedwetting. The signs are often more difficult to spot in secondary pupils, but could include some of the above plus a loss of interest in schoolwork and unusual and/or abnormal behaviour.

Byrne pointed out the perceived and very real importance of fitting in with one’s peers and mentioned Nick Hornby’s book, ‘About a Boy’ which deals with this aspect of school life very movingly and funnily. We should help children to get over fears rather than just tell them they’re silly ie: rehearse walking into a room, practise holding ones head up and glancing at the bully in a non-aggressive but non-tolerant way. We should help our children to gain a large support group including pupils, teachers and parents.
It is very important not to put a vulnerable child in the spot light by asking him/her whether he’s okay - it may exacerbate the problem. Catch the child at a moment when least attention is attracted.
Try and get your child to create their own codes of acceptable behaviour. My daughter, Rosie pointed out that this has unavoidable drawbacks because children constantly hear the rules given out by the teacher - so when they are asked to create their own list they would be bound to repeat the teacher’s wishes in an attempt to please. I’m not sure what to do about this except continually find innovative and fresh ways to ensure that the children understand how the rules benefit them.

As you might imagine without the Head’s willingness to explore bullying with an open and positive attitude there is little chance of real change or improvement. Certainly my family has found this to be very true when our daughters were attending a small primary on the west coast of Scotland. We took our grievances right up to the local authority and attended a meeting with the Community Educational Officer and the Head Teacher. Although positive resolutions were made at the meeting – nothing on the ground seemed to change. Most of the frustrations raised at the conference by parents were about head teachers that would not address bullying problems.

Rosie and I then attended a play extract ‘Silent Scream’ performed by Class Acts Theatre Group. It was excellent. An extremely talented professional actor played all the roles in this play with incredible expertise. He switched effortlessly from perpetrator to victim to head teacher to parents. I think Rosie made an interesting and observant comment that the ‘bully’ was attractive and sexy and the victim was unnoticeable and unattractive.

Afterwards the question of whether girls and boys ‘bullied in different ways’ was discussed. The common perception was that boys were more physical – again Rosie’s observation was that girls were just as scary and physical as boys and boys were just as ‘bitchy’ as girls. Have we succeeded then in diminishing the gender gap at last?
We also discussed ‘hitting back’. This is still the advice given by many parents. Although in the short term this may be seen as a solution, it seldom solves anything for long and it can get the victim into trouble and give the persistent perpetrator further opportunity to see his victim suffer.

After lunch we went to a workshop presented by S6 pupils from Dumbarton Academy and P7 pupils from a feeder primary. They talked about DASH (Dumbarton Academy Seniors Against Harassment) and DAM (Dumbarton Academy Mediation). These two projects have been running for six years and are still gathering momentum and enthusiasm. It has taken a lot of commitment to get the boys on board but now there are 140 seniors who have signed up and who run all aspects of DASH and if I remember rightly 40% of these are boys. They have training from Childline and other bodies in mediation skills – they know their strengths and their limitations - what they can deal with and what they can’t. The scheme now incorporates all their feeder primaries. Without doubt the pupils find it immensely rewarding – what really came across was the invaluable contribution DASH makes to its members in terms of lifelong learning and self-esteem.

As usual the conference stimulated much worthwhile discussion between the delegates – I would like to see this kind of day made much more available to parents and pupils alike. When pupils see the issues being opened up in this way – I think they can understand better the problems faced by schools and generate the enthusiasm to find support and resolutions.

08 Mar 2003