We have realised that it has perhaps been too long since we shared information about how we deal with reports of bullying here at Parkdale; we have perhaps assumed a bit too much, especially for more recent admissions. Our apologies for this.
This is a shame – our fault – because we are very proud of our work in this area over a number of years, starting with a lengthy parent/carer/pupil/staff consultation back in 2017. We have made several operational ‘tweaks’ since then too, usually responding to feedback and specific cases that have taught us something new.
Over the years, the system has worked very well; Ofsted felt it was exemplary and we have often been asked to share and support other schools in implementing something similar. Most importantly, it works. Almost all reported issues that are dealt with through the procedure result in a positive outcome.
Most reported issues turn out to be more of a ‘falling out’ or ‘just not getting along with’ than bullying as it is properly defined, but our system seems to work well to help us improve/resolve these too. Unfortunately, we do see a very small number of definite cases of bullying, but rarely – if ever – anything we can’t put a stop to. We can’t make children who don’t like one another like one another and we can’t force friendships where they’re not wanted, but we can act against name-calling, physical threats or other unkindness. We can even act where it’s not targeted or deliberate. Sometimes children don’t know they’re being unkind! Where things don’t work out between particular children, we can put into place support and extra structure around friendship groups and positive play.
The key to success is communication – from children and, if necessary, their families. We can only deal with what we know about. We never knowingly ignore a reported problem. We might not agree that it is bullying even, but we don’t ignore anything. In fact, we record everything zealously! Our system allows us to record, repeatedly review and act even if we aren’t in complete agreement about the circumstances and even if it’s unclear who is at fault or to what degree.
We think it’s a good system. We work very, very hard at it. It’s not perfect and we’re not perfect. Sometimes, adults in school might not respond to a child’s complaint about another in the way they want. We have to have a filter and make judgements on the spot. As you can imagine, children tell us lots! Some of it might at the time seem trivial – “he looked at me a bit funny” – and sometimes we get our filtering wrong or are focussed on something else in the burly-burly of teaching and looking after big groups of children.. The system aims to be a bit more robust and account for this on the grounds that repeated small things might all add-up to something more. Hence record and review.
We’ve put together the following document, complete with a flow chart, to serve as a reminder of how we manage such things. The original Anti-Bullying Charter that all of this is based on is also available on our website for reference: