'Isolated' incidents of bullying reported to Education Department

Sunday 24 September 2017

Isolated incidents of bullying involving members of staff have been reported to the Education Department, the Chief Education Officer revealed during a Scrutiny panel.

However Justin Donovan assured the panel there isn't a culture of bullying in island schools.

The Chief Education Officer denied allegations that there was evidence of bullying having been used to achieve results, contrary to what Deputy Tracey Vallois suggested during a quarterly meeting with the Education minister. Mr Donovan said the Department takes bullying incidents very seriously but that nobody had been providing evidence of such incidents. He however admitted later on in the meeting that isolated cases had been reported but that it wasn't a 'real issue.'

He said that anyone who has 'real' concerns about the way they are being treated needs to come forward and the first step might be speaking to a colleague or a union representative. He however added that managerial demands are sometimes confused as bullying. "Sometimes people might be struggling in their job and when they think they are being bullied, their line manager might simply be asking them to do their job well. There is a fine line between robust management and something that might become over robust and aggressive."

When questioned on what type of evidence the department requires in order to take action, the Education Minister, Deputy Rod Bryans said that having a conversation with a colleague about bullying and taking notes can help build a 'case.' Mr Donovan added that people shouldn't be afraid of coming forward by fear of losing their jobs as there are protocols in place, adding that the unions are very good at picking up incidents and dealing with them.

The minister then declined to include information around those reporting protocols in a future communication to all staff saying that it would be admitting there is bullying in the schools when "there is no evidence of it." While he said he was more than happy to reinforce his personal statement that bullying is never acceptable in any form and that he wouldn’t accept it with anything to do with teaching, he wouldn't want "to send a signal that we believe there is an endemic of bullying."

Deputy Louise Doublet, the chair of the panel, challenged this position and said that it was a reasonable request, that would reinforce the message and protect the staff by making them aware of what they can do if they are bullied. "It is not going to make teachers think there is a culture of bullying," she said. Deputy Vallois added that it was a matter of not letting things escalate to the point where people think there is a culture as there was evidence of bullying already. Mr Donovan replied: "Just because somebody says we do, it doesn’t mean we have a crisis. If we started to get more and more evidence that there is an issue we would do things differently. We don’t want to highlight something that we don’t think is an issue."