Bullying

Bullying is a common concern and can affect the emotional well-being of children and young people as well as their achievement in school. 

Bullying means the intentional hurting of one person by another, where the relationship involves an imbalance of power. It's usually repetitive or persistent, although some one-off attacks can have a continuing harmful effect on the victim.  Bullying often occurs because people are seen to be ‘different’ in some way; for example because of race, religion or culture, appearance, health, special educational needs, disabilities, sexual orientation or home circumstances. 

There are many methods of bullying including verbal bullying such as name-calling and taunting, physical bullying such as kicking, pushing and taking or damaging belongings. Psychological bullying often includes silent bullying to socially exclude people from groups and activities to hurt and lower their self-esteem. Cyberbullying involves the use of Information and Communications Technology (ICT), particularly mobile phones and the internet, deliberately to threaten and upset someone else. 

Bullying is often secretive and hidden so parents and carers might be aware of it before staff at school.  Children and young people often find it difficult to tell anyone because of fear of retaliation. If you are worried about bullying contact your school.  Schools are keen to address bullying matters swiftly and take steps, involving parents and carers, to sort it out. By law, schools must have a policy that encourages the reporting of bullying and challenges behaviour effectively to safeguard pupils.

We provide tools and support to help schools prevent, identify and take action against bullying behaviour.  We focus on preventative work and involving the children and young people. 

Please click here if you are a student  at a state secondary school in Buckinghamshire and would like to take part in the Safe from Bullying survey. This survey is anonymous and only takes 10 minutes. The results will be used to help schools to develop their work on preventing and tackling bullying.

Please click here to download the introductory briefing for this survey.

There are many external resources including websites and telephone help lines which provide advice and support for parents/carers and children and young people on dealing with bullying.  These may be useful if you want to talk about bullying problems with a third party which has no direct involvement.