Schools must record all bullying incidents under new guidelines

Schools will be obliged to record all incidents of bullying behaviour for the first time under new rules to be published shortly.

The updated procedures will shine a light on the extent of bullying in schools and will feed into an anonymised annual national report.

It is understood that training will be provided to school leaders and teachers by the Department of Education to help with the roll-out of the new measures and to help prevent and address bullying.

Bullying is defined in the plan as “targeted behaviour, online or offline, that causes harm” whether it is physical, social or emotional in nature such as cyberbullying, racist bullying, gender-identity bullying or sexual harassment.

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It adds that bullying behaviour is repeated over time and involves an imbalance of power in relationships between two people or groups of people in society.

Schools will be asked to record the nature of bullying behaviour, the approach taken to address the behaviour and the outcome.

In addition, they will be expected to regularly review their records of alleged incidents of bullying behaviour to discern emerging trends, to identify key learning and to consider what measures could be taken to prevent reoccurrence.

The measure forms part of a “bí cinealta”, or “be kind”, implementation plan which aims to prevent and respond to all types of bullying in schools.

The extent of bullying in Ireland has been the subject of numerous reports.

A 2019 survey of 19,000 young people by Jigsaw, a youth mental health organisation, and UCD found that 39 per cent of those in secondary school had experienced bullying.

Separately, Minister for Education Norma Foley has invited social media companies to take part in a round-table discussion on online safety for children and young people at the Department next month.

She has invited Facebook and Instagram parent firm Meta, TikTok and X (formerly Twitter), among others, to discuss the continuing issue of cyberbullying on social media.

In a report on school bullying in 2021, the Oireachtas education committee said bullying was “widespread in every urban and rural school”, and that cyberbullying had increased significantly as an unintended consequence of technological advances.

[ Bullying in schools, how it’s changed and how to handle it ]

The Oireachtas committee report urged the department to “urgently update” its action plan in line with current policies on child protection, wellbeing, relationships and sexuality education.

This gave rise to the Cineáltas, or kindness, action plan that was published by Ms Foley in 2022. It was based on months of consultation with children, parents, school staff, education partners and members of the public and attracted 4,600 response to public questionnaires.

Ms Foley has said the plan will greatly enhance the work that schools already do to ensure that all the children and young people are kept safe from harm and that the wellbeing of children and young people is at the forefront of thinking.

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“Our schools are vibrant, innovative and most importantly inclusive places of learning, but for some children and young people bullying is an unacceptable reality,” she said recently.

“Cineáltas is practical, inclusive and contains a broad range of actions which help us all to work together towards a diverse, inclusive Irish society free from bullying in all its forms and where individual difference is valued and celebrated.

“Our vision is to provide schools with the tools necessary to target and tackle cyber bullying, racism, gender identity bullying or sexual harassment, among other areas.”

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