Friendly Schools and Families
What is Bullying: a revisit of key points?
Bullying is the repeated and intentional behaviour of causing fear, distress or harm towards another person that involves an imbalance of power. It can involve humiliation, domination, intimidation, victimisation and harassment. In any bullying incident there are likely to be three parties involved: the bully, the person being bullied and bystanders.
Bullying can take many forms including:
- Physical bullying, which involves physical actions such as hitting, pushing, obstructing or being used to hurt or intimidate someone. Damaging, stealing or hiding personal belongings is also a form of physical bullying.
- Psychological bullying is when words or actions are used to cause psychological harm. Examples of psychological bullying include name calling, teasing or making fun of someone because of their actions, appearance, physical characteristics or cultural background.
- Indirect bullying is when deliberate acts of exclusion or spreading of untrue stories are used to hurt or intimidate someone.
- Cyber bullying is the ongoing abuse of power to threaten or harm another person using technology. Cyber bullying can occur in chat rooms, on social networking sites, through emails or on mobile phones.
What Bullying is Not
There are many negative situations, which whilst being potentially distressing for students, are not bullying. These include:
- Mutual Conflict Situations, which arise where there is disagreement between students but not an imbalance of power. Mutual conflict situations need to be closely monitored as they may evolve into a bullying situation; or
- One Off Acts (of aggression or meanness) including single incidents of loss of temper, shouting or swearing, do not normally constitute bullying.
Scotch College's Policy
Scotch College recognises its duty to students to provide a safe and positive learning environment where individual differences and diversity within the college is respected and accepted. Bullying is not tolerated at Scotch College.
It is our policy that:
- Bullying be managed through a 'whole of college community' approach involving students, staff and parents/carers;
- Bullying prevention strategies be implemented within the College on a continuous basis with a focus on teaching age appropriate skills and strategies to empower staff, students and parents/carers to recognise bullying and respond appropriately;
- Bullying response strategies be tailored to the circumstances of each incident;
- Staff establish positive role models emphasising our no-bullying culture; and
- Bullying prevention and intervention strategies are reviewed on an annual basis against best practice.
Mr Warwick Norman
Friendly Schools and Families Coordinator
