Bullying epidemic?

[onlyoranges]

I was reading an article which stated there is an epidemic of bullying within secondary schools. I just wondered what people's views were on this?

There will always in every school be some level of bullying. Any school that says they have no bullying is just deluding themselves.
The key issue is what do the schools do about reported bullying and the good schools make sure that they react properly to any bullying and stamp on it. The bad schools ignore it or worst still accept it is happening and do remarkably stupid things like segregate those being bullied, not those doing it.

The issue is discipline. Teachers have no powers at all to punish pupils, its all nicey nicey, lets talk, lets have a chat to your parents, etc. It all is SOOO time consuming, that there are only enough hours in the day to carry out the school "behaviour management policy" on a small number of pupils. if the bad behaviour extends beyond that small number you get into a run away situation, where the kids do what ever they like, and the teachers can never catch up with their waiting list of incidents to be dealt with.

I do. It believe many schools are like the one Charis1 describes though. Only those with extremely weak management. Most schools handle bullying pretty well but we have to accept that not all children are pleasant and probably do not come from pleasant families either. However, I think too many parents cannot seem to instil any form of resilience into their children. Things go wrong. Other people can be unpleasant. Children need to have strategies to cope. This does not mean bullying is not dealt with, but self preservation is very important because we now know that people who do not have resilience are far more likely to have mental health problems later on. We need to find a way to avoid this.

Lies, damn lies and statistics.

Bullying happens in all schools, It really is down to the management as to how effective the policies are.

When we were looking at high schools, one of the head teachers said 'we don't have bullying in our school' as part of her parents speech

I decided there and then that I wouldn't be sending my children there

Speaking to parents of my dc's friends, the pastoral care at that school is terrible

Bullying happens at every school and a large proportion of workplaces, it's not a new thing or an epidemic but it does need to be dealt with

Yes, bullying does happen to a greater or lesser degree in all schools. It also depends on the interpretation. Some students will feel they are bullied if someone name calls. Others will brush it off.

It really is a question of how effectively it's dealt with and how seriously the school takes it. Robust procedures applied consistently can reduce the amount of bullying and students will feel safer if they know that they are in place.

Emo. That's a huge red flag. They don't mean there is no bullying but rather we choose to ignore it so we can claim there is none. If you say your child is being bullied then we will do .... nothing.
Bullying happens. It's shit.

Bullying happens in all schools, and always has. Sometimes it is denied that bullying happens. Or even (definitely) there were no records kept of bullying and little done about it - so it seems to have increased if records are kept and something is done, so more people report.

Bullying has changed as there are new ways to bully (mobile phones/internet) that didn't exist before.

And be very glad you don't live in Japan (from what I've read).