RESEARCH FINDINGS

Some of the things that researchers have found out about bullying include:

• it happens in all schools
• it has to be acknowledged as a possible problem before it can be tackled
• while high profile campaigns at national, local or school level are useful ways of initiating action, on their own they do little or nothing to help.

It has also been found that schools which have taken action have been successful in reducing the level of bullying and that the single most effective thing that any school can do is to develop a policy to which everybody is committed. One way of getting commitment is to work with pupils, teachers and others to find out about the extent of bullying. This raises awareness and signals the school's intention to do something about it.

WHAT DO SCHOOLS WANT TO KNOW?

Finding out how a school stands in relation to bullying is an important part of such a policy. Questions schools are often interested in include:

• how much bullying is there?
• where and when does it occur?
• what do pupils, parents, teachers and non-teaching staff think should be done about bullying?
• which strategies and resources are used to deal with bullying?
• are there any other strategies, designed to cope with other problems, which could be adapted or extended to help reduce bullying?

These are just some examples of the type of questions that teachers, pupils and parents want to ask. Some schools may well want to ask others, but it is a good idea not to try to find out too much at once. Truth can be obscured by clouds of information.

It is clear that teachers and parents cannot solve the bullying problem on their own. They need the active co-operation of young people-even if only to tell them what is going on. While some pupils do respond to exhortations in assembly and pleas in the classroom, many have decided that keeping quiet is safer than speaking out. In my 1989 survey of bullying in ten Scottish secondary schools (see Spotlight 23), half of the children who had been bullied had told no-one. Of the victims who had told, 47% had told a parent and 31% a teacher.