Bullying can happen anywhere, however it prevents equality of opportunity and it is everyone’s responsibility to prevent it from happening and to deal with it robustly when it does occur.

What is bullying?

The term ‘bullying’ has changed over time. The Department for Education defines bullying as:

• Repetitive, wilful or persistent behaviour intended to cause harm, although one-off incidents can in some cases also be defined as bullying
• Intentionally harmful behaviour, carried out by an individual or a group
• An imbalance of power leaving the person bullied feeling defenceless.
• Intentional, repetitive or persistent
• Hurting of one person by another, where the relationship involves an imbalance of power Bullying can be physical, verbal or emotional by a single person or a gang.

There are four main types of bullying. All of these types of bullying can take the form of Homophobic/Racist/Ability or gender based bullying:

Verbal: Verbal bullying is when someone is called names, threatened and made to feel bad

Physical: Physical bullying is when someone is hit, punched, pushed or have their personal items stolen and any other kind of physical, aggressive contact

Social: Social bullying is when someone is left out of games, deliberately ignored and has bad things spread about them and made to feel like an outsider

Cyber: With the technology age a new type of bullying was born; Cyber Bullying. This type of bullying can be chat rooms, online, instant messaging, on a mobile phone or even e-mails

What can the school do?

We encourage all children to approach adults when they are upset. Where bullying is suspected teachers will speak to all the children involved and try to find out the cause of the issue. This process will often involve discussions about what happened and why. Children will be encouraged to understand what has gone wrong, reflect and confront the impact of what they have done. All serious reported incidents are recorded which are recorded and regularly reviewed. If there are repeated issues involving the same child then the school uses social skills groups, increased playground supervision, circle (social and citizenship) times in class, lunchtime clubs (including Reflection Zone) and on rare occasions of serious & sustained bullying children can be excluded.

Talk to an adult at school you trust or a family member, or to our wellbeing staff. If you don’t want to do that you can always call Childline on 0800 1111 or visit  www.childline.org.uk.

Our bullying investigation procedure