Chamber and committees

It is crucial that anti-bullying approaches focus on prevention and early intervention and that at the centre of this is the recognition of children’s rights.

Education Scotland, with local authorities, has a role to play to support the implementation of positive relationship and behaviour approaches and embed children’s rights.

We have issued guidance for local authorities within ‘Respect for All’, which set out the importance of recording and monitoring bullying incidents to ensure that an appropriate response had taken place. Recording of incidents also allowed for the identification of trends or themes emerging and where improvements could be made to support the wellbeing of pupils.

The Short Life Working Group on Recording and Monitoring of Bullying in Schools will also provide further guidance to local authorities and schools later this year in support of the universal approach to recording and monitoring that is being introduced.

respect me is also available to assist education authorities develop appropriate responses to help children and young people within their schools. “respect me ” has at its heart, a rights based approach. This is reinforced through its training programmes with practitioners, emphasising the message that bullying is a breach of children’s rights.

Monitoring of bullying incidents is essential and helps organisations identify recurring patterns thereby ensuring early intervention and appropriate support.

Following the publication of ‘Respect for All’ we have been working closely with local authority representatives, teacher and parent organisations and key stakeholder bodies to develop a universal and consistent approach to recording and monitoring incidents of bullying in schools.

The implementation of the universal approach to recording and monitoring will continue to be overseen by the Working Group on Recording and Monitoring of Bullying in Schools to ensure consistency in use and to improve outcomes for children and young people.

The development of ‘Respect for All’ was informed by a number of engagement sessions with children and young people; parents and carers; and, practitioners. Questionnaires were also issued to children and young people, and parents and carers.

In addition, in November 2016, I agreed to pause the publication of ‘Respect of All’ to enable further engagement with the Equality and Human Rights Committee, as part of their investigation into Bullying in Schools.

Bullying of any form is entirely unacceptable and we must challenge and address all types of bullying behaviour in schools. We want all children and young people to learn tolerance, respect, equality and good citizenship to address and prevent prejudice.

Education authorities are covered by the Equality Act 2010 (Specific Duties) (Scotland) Regulations 2012 (as amended), which sets out a number specific duties for public authorities, including: publishing equality outcomes, assessing policies and practices against the requirements of the public sector equality duty; publishing employee information; and reporting on the mainstreaming of equality throughout the organisation.

Education authorities publish regular reports, either in their own right or as part of a local authority, on the work they are doing to deliver the public sector equality duty. Regulation of the Equality Act 2010, including the 2012 Regulations, is carried out by the Equality and Human Rights Commission.

Education Scotland is responsible for inspecting all schools in Scotland (local authority and independent) against the same quality indicators as part of assessing How Good is Your school (HGIOS4).

The Scottish Government does not collect data on instances of racial and sexualised racial assault in schools. The Short Life Working Group on Recording and Monitoring Bullying in Schools will recommend improvements to SEEMiS to enable the recording of incidents of racial bullying at a local level.

If an assault has taken place then schools must record this through their Child Protection procedures and liaise with Police Scotland.

There is no legal definition of bullying in Scotland and there are currently no plans to define bullying including prejudice-based bullying in law.

The Equality Act 2010 places an obligation on schools and other public authorities to ensure that bullying by pupils that is related to a protected characteristic is treated with the same level of seriousness as any other form of bullying and that anti-bullying and other relevant policies are assessed against the public sector equality duty.

As part of local authorities' role to support the implementation of positive relationship and behaviour approaches there is a need to ensure that all staff have access to high-quality Career–Long Professional Learning to help improve outcomes for children and young people. All teachers must demonstrate the behaviours set out in the Standard for Registration. This requires teachers to consistently implement a school’s positive behaviour policy including:

- implementing strategies for understanding and preventing bullying;

 - managing pupil behaviour in and around the school, in a fair, sensitive and informed manner; and

 - recognising and taking action when a learner’s behaviour may signify distress and the need for further support.

It also requires that teachers:

 - have an understanding of the legal and professional aspects of a teacher’s position of trust in relation to learners and how these affect his/her daily responsibilities;

- have a secure working knowledge and detailed understanding of their contractual, pastoral and legal responsibilities as teachers.

The Professional Standards are managed by the General Teaching Council for Scotland and are currently being reviewed. This review provides an opportunity to consider whether commitments in this area require to be strengthened and the Scottish Government will ensure that GTCS considers this recommendation in taking forward this work.

To support local authorities and schools, the Scottish Government has fully funded respect me , Scotland’s anti-bullying service to provide direct support to build confidence and capacity to address all types of bullying, including prejudice-based bullying effectively. respect me provide specific anti-bullying training for anyone who works with children and young people.

All those working with children and young people should have a clear understanding of what bullying is and the importance of children’s rights and child protection. All people working with children and young people should be very clear on what action to take if they feel that a crime may have been committed. In each and every case a crime is suspected, Police Scotland should be contacted.

We published ‘Respect for all : The National Approach to Anti-Bullying for Scotland’s Children and Young People’ in November 2017 which includes a definition of prejudice-based bullying.

Prejudice-based bullying is when bullying behaviour is motivated by prejudice based on an individual’s actual or perceived identify; it can be based on a characteristics unique to a child’s or young person’s identify or circumstance.

Bullying behaviour may be a result of prejudice that relates to perceived or actual differences. This can lead to behaviour and language that could manifest into racism, sexism, homophobia, biphopia or transphobia or prejudice and discrimination towards disability or faith.