Welcome to our summer safeguarding newsletter! At MITSkills, we believe that creating a safe and supportive environment for all learners is paramount. Bullying is a critical safeguarding issue with far-reaching consequences for children and young people. It is essential for everyone in an educational setting to understand what bullying is, its various forms, its impact, and how to effectively prevent and respond to it.
Bullying is defined as “the repetitive, intentional hurting of one person or group by another person or group, where the relationship involves an imbalance of power”. This behaviour can be physical, verbal, or psychological, and can occur face-to-face or online. The core element of bullying is intent to harm.
Bullying can manifest in various ways:
Physical Bullying
This includes actions like hitting, kicking, tripping, or destroying a person’s property.
Verbal Bullying
This involves insults, teasing, name-calling, sexual harassment, or prejudice-based/discriminatory language, including threats.
Alienation
This type of bullying involves treating someone like an outcast, ignoring them, not including them in activities, and encouraging others to do the same.
Prejudice-Based/Discriminatory Bullying
This occurs when any of the above bullying types are motivated by hostility towards individuals or groups based on their disability, race, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, or other perceived differences. This form often reinforces established patterns of discrimination and prejudice.
Online Bullying (Cyberbullying)
This involves the use of technology to bully, such as via text messages, social media, or gaming. It can include the use of images and video and can increase the reach and frequency of incidents. Hurtful or private images and untrue/unkind comments can be easily shared with a wide audience.
Covert Bullying
This form of bullying often occurs behind the victim’s back and aims to damage their reputation. Examples include spreading rumours, mimicking, encouraging others to have a poor opinion of someone, or anonymously sharing personal information without consent.
Children can experience more than one form of bullying simultaneously, and the form may change depending on the context, such as in person or online, or across different settings like school and home.
A common misconception is that “banter” can excuse rude behaviour. However, there is a clear distinction:
Bullying
Involves a power imbalance, causes hurt and harm and is repetitive and intentional.
Banter
Involves a playful and friendly exchange of teasing remarks between people with equal power, with no intent to cause harm or hurt.
If someone feels hurt or upset, it is not banter.
Bullying can have devastating and lasting effects on individuals, impacting their learning and mental health. It also affects bullies and bystanders.
In the short term, bullying can lead to:
If left unaddressed, these shorter-term impacts can escalate into significant long-term issues. Long-term effects may include:
Bullying is unfortunately a common occurrence. Nearly 1 in 4 students reported being bullied “a lot” or “always”. Students receiving Free School Meals (28%) and those with special educational needs or disabilities (29%) were significantly more likely to be frequently bullied. Additionally, 6% of students reported frequently bullying others, and 5% reported frequently being bullied online. It is important to note that these figures may be an underestimation due to underreporting or children not recognising certain behaviours as bullying.
It is crucial for staff to be aware of the signs of bullying, as children may present differently when experiencing it. These signs can include:
Unexplained injuries
Distress/anxiety
Broken or missing possessions or damaged clothing/uniform
Changes in appearance, habits, and/or behaviour
Complaining of headaches and/or stomach aches, or problems with eating
Lateness and/or poor school attendance
A sudden change in attainment or engagement in lessons
A change in the use of online spaces and technology
It is important not to ignore behaviours, even if they seem “normal” for a child, as they may have been experiencing bullying for a significant period.
Taking swift and appropriate action is essential.
Preventing bullying requires a cohesive, collective, and collaborative “whole setting approach” that involves the entire community, with direct input from students. This approach should be consistently applied, embedded across the curriculum, and consider all spaces where bullying can occur, including online environments. Clear and understood policies are vital.
Key principles for prevention include promoting:
Compassion
Teach children and young people to support each other.
Kindness
Demonstrate the value of kindness.
Respect
Encourage respectful behaviours.
Acceptance
Promote equality and diversity across the curriculum, language used, and behaviours modelled.
Friendship
Provide opportunities for students to develop supportive networks, such as buddy schemes.
Staff should model these behaviours and work with children to identify in-person bullying “hot-spots” to address concerns. A culture of openness is crucial, where children feel safe to speak with any member of staff without fear of judgment. Responses to children should be consistent, and it is everyone’s responsibility to intervene.
Online bullying is a significant concern, often increasing the ways and frequency of bullying incidents. It is one of many potential online harms. Key characteristics of online bullying include:
Wide audience/more participants
Hurtful or private images and comments can be shared easily with many people, encouraging more to join in.
Messages and images are hard to erase
Once shared widely, content can be almost impossible to remove entirely, causing ongoing distress.
Victim easily accessible
Bullying can occur anytime, anywhere, making it feel like there is no escape.
The bully can remain anonymous
Anonymity can make it difficult for the victim to know who to trust.
Less obvious power imbalance
The online space can obscure the power imbalance often present in bullying.
It is vital to consider bullying when thinking about all aspects of online safety, as abusive adults can use online spaces to harm children in ways that initially appear to be child-to-child bullying, but can escalate into more abusive situations, such as stalking, harassment, identity theft, sexually motivated extortion/blackmail, sexual abuse, criminal exploitation, and encouraging self-harm or suicide.
While bullying itself isn’t a specific criminal offense in the UK, certain harassing or threatening behaviours or communications can be criminal offenses under various acts, including the Protection from Harassment Act 1997, the Malicious Communications Act 1988, the Sexual Offences Act 2003, the Communications Act 2003, and the Public Order Act 1986. Physical violence can also lead to criminal charges like common assault, actual bodily harm, and grievous bodily harm.
Hate Crime
Defined as “any criminal offence which is perceived by the victim or any other person, to be motivated by hostility or prejudice, based on a person’s actual or perceived disability, race, religion, sexual orientation, transgender identity”. This hostility can include ill-will, spite, contempt, prejudice, unfriendliness, antagonism, resentment, and dislike. Hate crime can encompass verbal abuse, intimidation, threats, harassment, assault, bullying, and property damage. Bullying often features hostility and prejudice towards real or perceived differences, and some bullying incidents may be deemed hate crimes by the police and Crown Prosecution Service.
Hate Incidents
These are “any incident which the victim, or anyone else, thinks are based on someone’s prejudice towards them because of their race, religion, sexual orientation, disability or because they are transgender”. Not all hate incidents are criminal offenses, but they can feel like crimes and may escalate. Police recommend reporting all hate incidents.
Incitement to Hatred
This criminal offense occurs when someone acts in a threatening way intended to arouse hatred. Actions can include words, pictures, videos, music, and can occur in person or online.
All children and young people can be vulnerable to bullying, but bullies often exploit prejudice against differences. Differences that can be used as vulnerabilities include:
Marginalised groups are particularly vulnerable to all forms of harm, including hate crime based on race, sexuality, trans identity, religion, and disability. However, any aspect of a person can be used by a bully, and assumptions should never be made about a child’s vulnerability to bullying.
A 17-year-old high-achieving student, Carlos, was targeted by a group of Year 12 students who set up a fake online account pretending to be a girl. Carlos engaged in online conversation, believing it was a student from another college. The Year 12 students then spread rumours and mocked him, causing him immense shame and leading him to make concerning remarks about not wanting to be “around anymore”.
Report as a safeguarding concern
Carlos is not in college and has made concerning comments.
Contact parents
Establish Carlos’s wellbeing and arrange a home visit to discuss the situation.
Support police report
If Carlos wishes, support him in making a police report about the fake account.
Inform relevant staff
Ensure Carlos’s Head of Year, tutor, and teachers are aware and can share additional information.
Consider mental health support
Refer Carlos to the college counsellor and explore further mental health support via a GP or CAMHS if needed.
Manage the situation within the college
Discuss with the Head Teacher, Head of Sixth Form, and Behaviour Manager how to manage the Year 12 students, applying anti-bullying and behaviour policies if a police report is not made.
Work with agencies
Partner with police and other agencies to support both the victim and the instigators.
Provide ongoing support
Ensure Carlos’s plans for university remain on track and he feels emotionally safe.
Develop a whole-college approach
Implement anti-bullying workshops, PSHE lessons, and external speakers to address online bullying.
This case highlights the importance of recognising the signs of online bullying, the severe emotional impact it can have, and the necessity of a swift, comprehensive, and collaborative response involving safeguarding procedures, mental health support, and appropriate disciplinary actions.
For more information, visit https://safeguarding.network/bullying
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