BULLYING

PROCEDURAL DOCUMENT

Effective Date: 07-July-17

Rationale

Bullying is a form of harassment, and usually refers to intimidatory behaviour between school students, but may involve staff. If the bullying involves staff and students, the Harassment procedure is followed.

Bullying is deliberate, harmful behaviour that is often repeated, or continues over a period of time. It often involves a power imbalance and it is difficult for those being bullied to defend themselves. Bullying takes place in the digital world too, through cyberbullying. 

All members of the school, including students themselves, have a responsibility to recognise bullying and to take action when they are aware of it happening. Bullying behaviour can be overt (directly and easily observed) or covert ( indirect and hidden or less easily observed). A great deal of bullying is covert with bullying behaviour rarely occurring in front of adults. If students are being bullied, they need to feel supported and know what to do.

Examples of bullying behaviours include:

• physical, for example, hitting, kicking, taking belongings, defacing a web page
• verbal, for example, name calling; insults; racist, sexist, homophobic, or transphobic remarks
• social/relational, for example, spreading nasty stories, excluding from groups, making threats, standover tactics
• cyberbullying, for example, posting negative comments on social media, publishing or sending inappropriate messages or images, sending mean or intimidating texts and emails.

To effectively prevent and respond to bullying behaviour at Plateau School we:

• create a safe, inclusive, and respectful environment
• promote digital citizenship to our students
• provide guidelines for managing and dealing with bullying
• identify and acknowledge bullying/intimidating behaviour and do not tolerate it. This includes cyberbullying, and transgender bullying.
• deal with incidents of bullying through the Support Group approach: