At primary level 61% of pupils have suffered relational bullying at some time. This drops to 49% at secondary level (source: island-wide consultation survey, Children’s Commissioner 2018).
Picture: Could the signs of bullying be missed?
All schools have an anti-bullying policy, which has been recently updated by CYPES. Key to its enaction is the victim taking that first step and making a complaint.
Having placed their trust in the system, it is then incumbent on the school to follow agreed procedures in exercising their duty of care. Education parlance calls it ‘safeguarding’ and every school has a safeguarding ‘lead’.
Children ‘falling out’ is a regular occurrence. With a-thousand-and-one other pressures on the teacher’s time, it is understandable that they might miss the signs – of trauma, of abuse, of anxiety. What distinguishes the mundane from the more serious is the extent of the bullying, both in its degree and its longevity.
You cannot disguise a bloody nose or a black eye but today’s bully, operates very much in the shadows. On occasion, there is a callousness, a desire to inflict maximum torment on the victim. It is literally, torture. That says more about the perpetrator than it does about the victim, yet they are rarely afforded the remedial attention they need.
Pictured: With the rise in social media usage, cyber bullying can escalate from schools to home.
In today’s world, there is no escape for the victim. No safe haven beyond the playground. Even the supposed security of the home environment is no longer a place of sanctuary. Through ethereal connections afforded by social media, the victim is targeted. The abuse is unrelenting and unforgiving. Like children circling a terrified child in the playground, acolytes pile in and inflict blow after blow, over days and weeks.
If that is not enough, carefully edited video ‘evidence’ is circulated, creating fake narratives. The level of sophistication can be frightening. This is not keyboard warriors trolling celebrities, it is children attacking children. Around 13% of Jersey pupils have admitted to doing this. How can a young, vulnerable, victim, recover from such an onslaught?
When bullying is identified there are a number of courses open to the school. Mediation is one such route but this requires both victim and perpetrator to sit in the same room and explain their ‘feelings’. The mere presence of the bully across the table is enough to bring on an anxiety attack.
Another option is to sanction the bully. They may be suspended but only for a short period of time, and when they return, will anything change? Will the victim feel vindicated or live in fear of further reprisals? It is unlikely that the bully will be asked to leave the school permanently. France is the latest country to take bullying in schools seriously. Legislation has been passed that any adult or child found bullying in schools or universities could receive a fine of up to €35,000 and/or three years in prison. If a victim commits suicide the fine rises to €150,000 and ten years in jail.
Picture: Hopefully schools will become more aware of bullying and encourage students to think about how it would feel if they get bullied.
Many schools on Jersey have signed up to the Rights Respecting Schools. This encourages pupils to be aware of other’s feelings. Or to put it in the vernacular, being ‘woke’. There are those who conflate being ‘woke’ with being weak. But the term is a bastardisation of the term being ‘awake’ or being ‘aware’.
The old nursery rhyme that begins ‘sticks and stones…’ and end with ‘but names will never hurt me’, was always a lie. Name calling does hurt. Verbal abuse cannot be passed off as harmless ‘banter’. What was tolerated in the past is no longer culturally acceptable. Culture is not being cancelled it is evolving. Describing victims as ‘snowflakes’ and/or that they should ‘grow a pair’ is giving bullies the green light to carry on making other people’s lives intolerable.
For elected officials to argue otherwise is irresponsible.
Around 75% of primary children think that schools take bullying seriously. This drops to around 53% at Secondary level (Jersey Children and Young People Survey 2019). If parents are not satisfied with a school’s response to their child’s abuse there is a complaints procedure but this process is not independent and it is questionable whether authorities put the child first. If mistakes are made, the present government’s modus operandi is to close ranks and obfuscate.
Factor in the pandemic, and the struggling mental health support available to islanders and it is no wonder that we now have a small but growing number of ‘young mental health refugees’, some of whom have left the island in search of sanctuary. Innocent victims, left to pick up the pieces of a life shattered by bullying.