Anti Bullying

At Bentley High Street we are committed to keeping children safe both inside and outside of school. We aim to provide a supportive, caring and safe environment that allows children to learn without fear of being bullied. Bullying of any kind is unacceptable and will not be tolerated. If bullying does occur, parents and children should be confident that incidents will be dealt with promptly and effectively.

The law

Some forms of bullying are illegal and should be reported to the police. These include:

•              violence or assault

•              theft

•              repeated harassment or intimidation, for example name calling, threats and abusive phone calls, emails or text messages

•              hate crimes

Schools and the law

By law, all state (not private) schools must have a behaviour policy in place that includes measures to prevent all forms of bullying among pupils.

This policy is decided by the school. All teachers, pupils and parents must be told what it is.

Aims:

To establish a safe environment in which children can learn and develop.

To have a clear definition of bullying.

To have procedures for dealing with bullying.

To have an ethos of respect.

Definition:

Our school adopts the Department for Education definition of bullying:

• Bullying is behaviour by an individual or group, repeated over time, that intentionally hurts another individual or group either physically or emotionally.
• Bullying can take many forms:
•  cyber – bullying via social media and/ or text messages
•  peer – on – peer pressure
• sexual harassment
• Bullying is often motivated by prejudice against particular groups, for example on grounds of race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, or because a child is adopted or has caring responsibilities.
• It might be motivated by actual differences between children, or perceived differences.
• Stopping violence and ensuring immediate physical safety is obviously a school’s first priority but emotional bullying can be more damaging than physical; teachers and schools have to make their own judgements about each specific case.
• Many experts say that bullying involves an imbalance of power between the perpetrator and the victim.
• This could involve perpetrators of bullying having control over the relationship which makes it difficult for those they bully to defend themselves.
• The imbalance of power can manifest itself in several ways, it may be physical, psychological (knowing what upsets someone), derive from an intellectual imbalance, or by having access to the support of a group, or the capacity to socially isolate.
• It can result in the intimidation of a person or persons through the threat of violence or by isolating them either physically or online.

Prevention:

Within our curriculum, we teach the importance of respecting others and taking responsibility for our own actions.  We always address issues such as bullying and we learn how to resolve problems without arguing. Anti-bullying helplines are shared in classes and on display around school. Our school adopts a method of restorative practice this is where children are helped to solve problems.  Members of our School Council are committed to raising awareness and creating an anti-bullying ethos. Every year our School Council work with governors, teachers and all pupils to organise an anti-bullying week. During this time, we review our policies.

We are really proud to be award 'silver school' status by the Anit-Bullying alliance for our work against anti-bullying. 

"This is not an easy award programme and you should be incredibly proud of what you have achieved! For context, we had 331 schools complete the programme with only 2% achieving Gold, 14% Silver, 71% Bronze and 12% a certificate of participation. " - Anti-bullying alliance