Mr Gove - AIBU to ask you personally to come on here and explain why schools never punish or exclude the bully

[marriedinwhite]

In response to the bullying and behaviour thread and the comments that have made it clear that teachers can do nothing to properly manage bullying and poor behaviour because it links with Ofsted's idea of behaviour management and means schools are less likely to receive outstanding or good at inspection, would you care to explain why it is the usually silent and compliant majority who are made to suffer.

As a parent good behaviour management means ensuring that the compliant, well behaved and hard working majority are allowed to learn in a reasonable environment.

As a parent I would expect teachers to be congratulated for trying to ensure this is the case.

As a parent I expect the achievements of the majority to be maximised by ensuring there is a positive educational environment for the majority.

As a parent I expect the bullies and those who behave badly to be the ones who are punished and to lose educational opportunities.

As a parent I expect organisations such as Ofsted to be supporting the well behaved majority and ensuring they have every opportunity to succeed and that those opportunities are not diluted.

As a parent and a citizen I would be happy to pay a few more shillings in tax to fund specialist units to deal with those who are ruining school experiences for the majority and to ensure they receive the specialist help they need to both conform to society's norms, to receive an education and to support them to lead peaceful, productive lives later on. This would be an investment in all our futures because the damage that is presently being allowed to take place - the chipping away at standards for all - can only have a detrimental effect.

So come on Mr Gove, come on here and tell us if you think it would be acceptable for your children to have be educated alongside, thieves, the violent, the uncontrollable and the disruptive whilst you watched their teachers do nothing but make excuses because their hands are tied behind their backs for all but the most exceptional cases where someone undoubtedly has been badly hurt.

and I would second reallytired about the difficulty of judging situations

I had a friend who went steaming into school to complain that her ds was being cold-shouldered and nobody wanted to play with him

what actually happened (confirmed by dinner ladies and my own ds) was that her son, who was unusually strong for his age and a little socially insecure, had taken to pushing other children over: the smaller children were frightened of him and gave him a wide berth

fortunately, the teacher took her time over the situation and it was eventually resolved- the other boy became one of ds' best friends, though ds had previously been so scared of him that he had started saying he didn't want to go to school

I remember being accused of bullying under similar circumstances in junior school; my take on the situation was that I had befriended this new girl but that once she worked out that I was not one of the alpha girls she had taken to passing quite unpleasant comments on my personal appearance in an attempt to dissociate herself from me

yes, I had stopped playing with her- but would you want to socialise with someone who said that looking at your eyes (I had a squint) made you feel queasy?

again, the lack of knee-jerk reactions meant things could be patched up; I can't say I ever felt friendly towards this girl (she's probably still a cow!) but at least we learned to keep coldly civil

another little boy in ds' junior school went through a very very difficult time at home, nobody's fault, just the shit life throws at you, and in reaction started hitting people at school, ds being one of the main victims

the school were very reassuring, they worked out a programme which involved counselling, supervision at breaktime, a set of sanctions- and it worked; it was in his interests, it was in our interests, it was in the interests of school discipline

Sorry but I know lots of schools do deal with bullying ineffectively, and sometimes it seems the victim is more punished than the bully. (Which is still better than my day, when teachers did nothing even when informed that a child was going to be beaten up on the way home from school; and then were shocked when a boy ended up off school for a long period of time after he had been knifed.)

However some schools do deal effectively with bullying, and whilst trying to stop the bullying and change the behaviour of the bully, do collect the evidence etc. needed to permanently exclude the bully; whilst also providing support and counselling for the victim.

Just because some schools and LAs say they can't do it, doesn't mean this is true. Maybe Mr Gove could highlight this, similar to the excuses for not running school trips.

what we need is a clear definition of bullying, it's too easy to shout bullying when it is normal behaviour that is perhaps a bit unkind, saying that it would also make it easier to recognise and deal with appropriately the real bullying going on.

Have been busy today and unable to come back to this. For clarification, I wasn't talking about a bit of low level joshing or teasing and silly upsets amongst five year olds. I was talking about violence, stealing, constant disruption and the impact this has on the compliant majority. Behaviours that in any other environment other than a school would be regarded as criminal.

I was thinking also in the context of secondary rather than primary and of scenarios where young people are genuinely scared for their safety and genuinely scared of what might happen next. I was thinking in the context of both tangible physical and emotional harm and less tangible internet intimidation.

I was thinking of children who manage to stay out of trouble and keep under the radar of the bullies and the dysfunctional but who expend a lot of emotional energy on strategies to do so, who worry about the next school day, who have to feel very cautious, who worry about who will get hurt next. Not least was I thinking about the children who do get hurt, sometimes badly. The child with sn who gets pushed against lockers and kneed and laughed at, the geeky or aspergic child with fearsome intellect and so much potential who gets purposefully pushed over on the bus, the children like my dd who wanted to talk out but feared to do so lest those bully and behave badly targetted her next. I mean the teachers who see it day in and day out but whose hands are tied and whose conscienses appear frozen.

I mean the children who might have got a B at GCSE but due to constant disruption got a C because settling classes eats into teaching time.

None of that is right. Some schools do manage it better than others but surely in any school where children are getting emotionally or physically hurt on a day in day out basis there has to be a remedy. When I was 11, 12, 13, 14 if any child behaved so badly another was hurt, if there was continual insubordination to teaching staff, if behaviour might have affected the reputation of a school, there were consequences. Now there seems to be a free for all and ultimately it helps no-one. It doesn't help the compliant majority and neither does it guide and support the non compliant minority.

It needs to be dealt with. I cannot understand why there are those who think it doesn't.

It's been the same for years, not just under him.

I mostly agree with Maryz. The bully in year 1 will become the adult of tomorrow, so the more that can be done to turn that around while he's young, the better. Very few children are intrinsically 'nasty' IMO (in fact I haven't met any). Most are just either misguided or sometimes heartbreakingly disturbed.

However, if it was my child on the receiving end of it? I think KitchenRoll's suggestion (for the bully, not the victim) is ideal, but should of course be counterbalanced by giving the 'bully' some help and support to learn a new way of behaving and find out what (if any) underlying reasons are behind that behaviour. However, all too often we see victims treated almost as nuisances, which perpetuates the blame culture and creates the feeling that people should try to appease those who would bully them, rather than stand up to them. That's not a message I want my child taught. Appeasing bullies simply makes them bully you harder. We sometimes expect our children to cope with harassment that a working adult has legal recourse to deal with in the workplace, and that can't be right.

And so I sit so squarely on the fence that I have splinters in my arse.

Well when I was 11, 12, 13 I remember it being dealt with not at all. If only I could remember who was in power then...

I completely disagree maryz

Children's lives can be ruined by bullies, even if they are well behaved and bright

When I was 11, 12, 13, etc., it swung from Wilson to Heath and back again I think. There were consequences then and I well recall a child being expelled for theft and another lower down the school for violence. It meant that standards were high and the compliant majority could learn or at least exist in peace and without fear.

It's the age of entitlement, innit? Bullies must be allowed to have it their own way. Bullied children should learn to man up.

There is also not enough acknowledgement of bullying at home. Bullying often breeds bullies and I can bet some of these kids are bullied by parents

And it can be so covert and insidious that the child would never be able to articulate how or why they feel bullied

Sadly I feel you will never overcome bullying. It is a part of our 'get ahead' culture and the cycle of dysfunction that reaps through generations

breaks my heart

Bullying could be overcome if there was a will to.

And teachers can be bullies too

Would have to change a whole culture

heck i feel so strongly about it, im writing a book!

I think Seeker makes a good point, as the parent of a bullied child you don't always get to know if a child has been excluded.

A girl who bullied my DD last year came out of meeting with the Head and said she was being excluded but didn't know when. The end of the next week she took an unexpected trip to see a parent who lives abroad for two days. I suspect very strongly she had a two day exclusion but can't be certain. The situation has improved drastically since then to the extent that although they will never be friends, they have walked home together once.

I do think there needs to be a tougher approach with bullies in secondary school.

Children's lives can be ruined by bullies

Yes - just like my son's life has been.

I don't use the wotd 'bullying'. I call it what it is assualt.

After years of assaults at school, all ineffectively dealt with by his school, despite meetings, phone calls, letters etc, DS was subjected to a particularly violent assault within school, that left him with a suspected broken nose.

All because he had Aspergers syndrome and his vulberabilities were visible.

That assault was the final straw. He had the equivalent of a breakdown.

I withdrew him from school on medical advice.

He then spent 8 months receiving help and support within an adolsecent psychiatric unit.

He never returned to mainstream school.

He never obtained the 10 GCSEs he was studying for - he could only manage 3 in the Hospital School.

Never underestimate the effect that sustained abuse has on a young vulnerbale person.

Don't expect schools to deal effectively with the issue - they prefer to refuse to acknowledge it's even happening - as though their 'Anti Social Behaviour Policy' that they all hide behind is an amulet that protects the pupils from assualts.

Do not expect me to have any sympathy whatsover for these thugs. They were 15. They knew exactly what they were doing. They also knew that no steps would be taken to punish them.

Personally I would have taken great delight in dismembering the shits and sending their body parts in parcels to the nearest council dump.

Do not care if this offends - offence is nothing compared to what I have to to deal with and DS and I are still trying to cope with the aftermath.

Michael Gove probably has an extremely skewed view of howbullying should be handled. (no excuse I know) because he went to a school that had a very skewed way of dealing with it and a school that disciplined at times using bullying tactics. Not that this is in any way helpful but knowing what his school life was like often makes me a bit that he is education secretary because his reality and experiences are not the reality for most.

Wetaugust

The thing is, there are agencies like Kidscape and BeatBullying which are very clear about how bullying should be dealt with.

There has been plenty of published research.

It's just that all the research and advice is ignored by schools.

It's true that bullying is particularly dangerous at secondary school, can easily become life-threatening, and should indeed be called assault in many cases.

It's also true that the children of bullies have probably never seen at close quarters how decent people treat one another; so they are very likely to become bullies themselves, having never witnessed anything else.

You don't need agencies or charities to tell schools how to deal with anti-social behaviour.

It's not rocket science. It's sheer common sense.

The problem is that schools hav no means of dealing with it.

If they exclude they lose funding. The thug just gets shuffled into the next nearest school and their behaviour conyinues unabated with another set of victims. Eventually they can even get shuttled but to their original school. One of the thugs that assualted my DS had been expelled and readmitted a few years later.

If they school tries to place the thug in a PRU they remain dual-rolled at their original school (oh-yes, the plan is to re-integrate them). Meanwhile their original school loses funding so has no incentive to exclude.

So school prefers to keep it's head firmly buried in teh sand. Assaults don't happen at their school - the victim just percieves he is being assualted - a favourite avoidance tactic. Or the victim has brought in on himself being haveing ASD / being small / having ginger hair / looking vulnerable. As I was told - the victim should just 'get over it'.

The strongest punuishment for what they did to my son was an afternoon's exclsuion in school - the thug sat in a different room for the afternoon.

The final assault was not even properly investigated as the thug's parents took him on an impromptu holiday abroad the next day. Investigation was suspended pending his return to school. Investigation was never reinstigated when he did. Got off scot free.

This was not a 'one-off'. A few years later the local newspapaers reported that a young boy with cerebral palsy had been sexually assaulted at the same school.

And what was the Headmaster doing? I think he was spending more time fighting the local community's objections to his plans to sell off the school playing fields to developers than he was ensuring that his school was a safe environment in which children could learn.

Welcome to an Osted highly rated, oversubscribed secondary school in the leafy suburbs.

I know, you are right in what you say. I'm so sorry about your ds.

It is sheer common sense, but there are plenty of opponents to effective tackling of bullying nonetheless. It ought to be common sense that no-one should blame the victim, yet plenty of people do, including teachers.

The worst thing is that the bullies get the clear message that society won't do a damn thing to stop them doing exactly as they like.

Ooh I so agree.

In the school I work in a kid can be literally jumping off the walls, calling the teacher all manner of things etc and so they get sent out. When they are out the class work really well but then someone always comes along and gets the little Sod taken back into class which disrupts the learning for the rest of the class. The worst ones can't be excluded because OFSTED/the government have put a 'maximum number' on the amount of pupils who can be excluded - if the school happens to be in a rough area with loads of kids who all seem to behave equally badly it means you are kinda screwed! The good kids can't 'rise above it' because the poor teacher has no time to teach because they are so busy with the naughty minority who get away with anything because the school cant punish them effectively.

Some of these kids do have major underlying issues (in our school we have, drug dealer and murderer parents, kids who have been shipped round about 6 kids homes, abusive families etc.) but in those cases what the children need most is clear guidelines, consistency and fairness. IMHO there are loads of kids at my school who have major issues and are perfectly well rounded and sweet individuals - these are the ones who have been given behaviour boundaries and consequences for their actions. Most if the kids who are little s**ts are ones with lesser issues who have just been allowed to run riot without consequences.

Just my tuppence worth!

marriedinwhite I completely agree with your post. I saw this with my own DDs, espacially the one that went to the local Sec Modern school. She must have had a good 20% of her school time wasted by prats who would not settle down in class. Wish we had sent her private now tbh, but we moved house to get to better schools away from the zoo they would have gone to if we stayed in S London (near Croydon!!).