NB: THIS TRANSCRIPT WAS TYPED FROM A TRANSCRIPTION UNIT RECORDING AND NOT COPIED FROM AN ORIGINAL SCRIPT: BECAUSE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF MIS-HEARING AND THE DIFFICULTY, IN SOME CASES OF IDENTIFYING INDIVIDUAL SPEAKERS, THE BBC CANNOT VOUCH FOR ITS ACCURACY. ........................................................................ PANORAMA WHY BULLIES WIN RECORDED FROM TRANSMISSION: BBC-1 DATE: 10:04:05 ........................................................................ MUM: What's happened? VICTORIA THOMPSON: [crying] I am not going back to that stupid school. I hate it. I've got crisps down my back. DECLAN: A 15 year old girl distraught and frightened just a few minutes after being attacked by school bullies. They've targeted her and they're winning. In schools across the country thousands of children suffer abuse from their peers that most adults would find impossible to cope with. Some of them go through it every day. Secret Recording BOY: Are you going for a fight?... GIRL: …F***ing hell… NATALIE KING: I had bruises on my legs, my back, my chest. DECLAN: And for a few the effects can be devastating. MICHELLE ELLIOT: A 14 year old girl, stripped on the school playground, made to kneel down, beg for her clothes. Photographs are taken and circulated around the school. She attempted suicide. DECLAN: The fight against bullying has never been so prominent. David Beckham is one of the latest celebrities to lend his support. DAVID BECKHAM: I've got children and yeah, I know of friends that have been in situations and now it's just nice to be involved in it. DECLAN: This film looks at how we're tackling school bullying and reveals how some experts think we're getting it wrong. LIZ CARNELL: I think that there are a number of trendy Wendy ideas on dealing with bullying, and I don’t think that they're necessarily all a good thing. DECLAN: And it asks if we could be doing more to help its victims. MUM: All we wanted was for Laura to be safe in school. DAD: Yes, that wasn't much to ask for – but obviously it was. DECLAN: Tonight Panorama asks why, when the government says its standing up for victims, in some schools bullies still win? Victoria Thompson is 15. She says that for her school is a daily ordeal. VICTORIA: Every day I go through stages of name-calling, getting stuff thrown in my hair, getting spat at, getting kicked, getting pencils stabbed in me. They call me Smellie Nellie, Smellie bitch, you're fat, you need a face lift and all sorts like that. DECLAN: There's nothing unusual about what Victoria Thompson goes through every day. A recent NSPCC survey revealed that about one in twenty children suffer some degree of bullying on a regular basis. Most anti bullying charities agree that reported bullying is on the increase. ESTHER RANTZEN Chair of Childline Certainly at Childline we've had more calls than ever about bullying, more than 30,000 calls last year alone about bullying from children and their families, all at their wits end just desperate to try and find a way of making their lives happier. VICTORIA THOMPSON I tried throwing myself down the stairs, I tried sneaking tablets in my bag to school to take and give myself an overdose and I've tried getting knives and stuff in my room so I'd cut myself but it hasn't worked because my dad's always caught me, or my mum. DECLAN: And why would you want to do that? VICTORIA: Because I was getting fed-up of my life, I was just wanting to go and kill myself. I didn't want to be around here anymore because I didn't think my life was worth living for when it started bad again. DECLAN: And do you think the bullies have made you feel that your is not worth living? DECLAN LAWN: And do you think the bullies have made you feel that your life is not worth living? VICTORIA: Yes, because they say it all the time, and I get called… I get told to die and stuff. DECLAN: This is Huntcliff School in rural North Lincolnshire, it's proud of its reputation as a good school. A recent Ofsted report praised the school's commitment to the welfare of its pupils. Head teacher, Sue Bond, has made beating the bullies a priority. SUE BOND Head Teacher, Huntcliff School This is one of the many pupil information boards that are around this school. We have information here about the year council, the school council. One of the things that we signed up to is that our school community ensures that pupils are aware that all bullying concerns will be dealt with sensitively and effectively, and we're working very hard to promote that message. DECLAN: When it comes to the latest strategies for addressing bullying Huntcliff School appears to be a shining example. In Scunthorpe it's just a few hours since Victoria Thompson left for school and already there's been another incident. Her mother is going to the school to pick her up. She says she regularly complains to Victoria's school about bullying. DAWN THOMPSON I've been into school numerous occasions cos it's really frustrated me. It's like I'm helpless in this because I'm trying to fight the cause for Victoria and nothing.. nothing seems to be getting done about it. She's threatened to take her own life and everything because of it. It upsets me because I thought I was sending her to a good school what… when we first looked round it had a big anti bullying programme on. DECLAN: Victoria's school does indeed have good anti bullying policies. She's a pupil at Huntcliff. DAWN: What's happened? VICTORIA: I'm not going in to that stupid school. [crying] I hate it. I've got crisps down my back. DAWN: Right, let's go in Vicky.. VICTORIA: I'm not going in, I'm not going in. I need to get changed. I need to get my hair washed, I've got crisps in it. DAWN: Well if I get permission then they'll let you come home. VICTORIA: I've had lino thrown at me, I've been pinched in my fingers. [crying] DAWN: Who is it who's done it? Right, come on, let's go to school. [Dawn coming out of school] Q: What did they say? DAWN: They've said they're gonna… said she'll deal with it, she says I can bring her home. She's a mess, there's salad cream and everything all over her clothes. They said they'll deal with it, that's all I know. [emotional] I'm just getting fed-up of it. DECLAN: Victoria's mother says that this kind of incident is not unusual. Huntcliff School says that they feel unable to talk about Victoria's case because of confidentiality issues, but they say they've tried several different ways to help Victoria and they're still trying. GIRL: I am the person who sat on her own, I am the person who walked home alone, BOY: I'm the person you scared every day, GIRL: I am the person who had nothing to say, BOY: I am the person with hurt in his eyes, I am the person you never saw cry…. DECLAN: This is the latest government backed anti bullying campaign. By now it's familiar to most young people. Celebrities are endorsing blue wrist bands to send out the message that bullying should not be tolerated, and for victims of bullying there's no shame in speaking out. BOY: Make a stand – wear a band. BEAT BULLYING www.need2know.co.uk DECLAN: And on Radio 1 where the Blue Wrist Bands campaign originated, victims are speaking out in increasing numbers. EMMA B Radio 1 Every week without a shadow of a doubt the large majority of calls that we get week in week out are in some shape or form something to do with bullying. Combine that with the response that we've just recently had to our bullying campaign, the Beat Bullying blue wrist bands. We had a million requests for blue wrist bands. It clearly sends a message out that this is something that.. you know.. practically every young person has had some experience of. DECLAN: And as more children speak out, more organisations are there to respond. At the last count there were over 50 charities dealing with bullying. Last year the government launched an umbrella organisation, the Anti Bullying Alliance to help unify the campaign. GILL FRANCES National Manager, Anti-Bullying Alliance There's a huge encouragement and enthusiasm for doing something about it. Children, young people, parents, teachers, school, government, all the organisations working with schools are saying yes bullying is very, very serious, we need to do something, there's lots of things available for us to do, lets get on with it. DECLAN LAWN School bullying may once have been seen as an unfortunate fact of life, but today the message is that it doesn't have to be tolerated, and mostly that message is aimed at children. We tell them that if they're being bullied they should tell someone, and in most cases that advice works. But sometimes, for thousands of children, telling doesn't help. Natalie King is 17, she says she was severely bullied in school. She felt that nobody believed her so during her final year at school she carried a tape recorder. The following incident was recorded outside the last school she attended - Inverurie Academy. Secret Recording NATALIE KING When going to school and that's when they start tripping me up and pushing me and punching you and punching you and kicking you and slagging you off and just everything every single day, every minute of the day, and the day goes slow once you're actually at school and once you're in the middle of it all, it's a horrible day. DECLAN: Natalie says that she first became a target for bullies at her primary school in Aberdeen. She went to four different schools in the area. She says the bullying followed her to each one. DOUG KING Well we went through 9 years of.. I suppose as she described – hell. Every day without fail she was called names. She was abused, she was pushed down stairs, they stole her money, they stole her purse and her belongings. She would come home with chewing gum in her hair, chewing gum in her clothes, they'd burn her clothes with cigarette burns in the back. I mean short of causing her serious damage or killing her there's probably not a lot they didn't do to her. NATALIE: I had bruises on my legs, my back, my chest, everywhere. I'm not an easily bruised person but I always ended up with bruises somewhere on my body. DOUG: And they broke her nose on one occasion, spat in her face which to me is worse than any bruise. They held her up against a fence and took turns at spitting in her face and the spit was running out her eyes, it was in her mouth and everything, and that's far worse than any bruise. DECLAN: Natalie says the worst bullying took place at Dyce Academy. After one incident near the school she required hospital treatment. Her father, who witnessed it, says he got involved to help his daughter. He was convicted of assault and had to pay a fine of £650. We spoke to Aberdeen City Council's Crawford Langley and head teacher of Dyce Academy Mike Taylor about how they tell teachers to deal with bullying. MICHAEL TAYLOR Head Teacher, Dyce Academy Well, the first thing they have to do is take it seriously. That might sound trite but it's not. Whatever the child says and whatever you might think of their descriptions of the situation at the time they perceive it as bullying and therefore you have to take it seriously. DECLAN: Natalie King says she was told to ignore the problem. TAYLOR: I find it very hard to believe. I don’t know what people said but I find it very hard to believe that someone would say that. DOUG: One particular incident at Dyce Academy Natalie came home and told us about it and we thought absolutely no way would a teacher ever do that. So the very next day I went out and bought some digital recording surveillance equipment and from that day on we sent Natalie into school with this digital recording equipment on and Natalie was right. Natalie wasn't lying. DECLAN: Are you aware that she did record some of this conversation of the teachers? TAYLOR: [pause] [shakes head negatively] DECLAN: Natalie King says she recorded several meetings with teachers at the school including this one. We have disguised the voice of the teacher. TEACHER: Do you think that ignoring these situations and letting other people get into trouble would help? NATALIE: I can't ignore it, it's impossible. TEACHER: [without waiting for response and overlapping] Well I think that might help. I think the people who never have any problem with erh.. people.. like the people who come to me and say that, you know.. so and so's done something to them but they don’t do anything back, and then eventually it just dies down because I know that these people don’t….. NATALIE: Yeah, but I can't exactly ignore it if I'm going to get kicked and punched. TEACHER: If you don’t say anything and do nothing… NATALIE: .. and the other day I got punched by this boy that I don’t even know and I just turned round and said: "Why did you punch me?" He said: "Oh, I was just wondering if you had any money?" TEACHER: Well just ignore something like that. NATALIE: Yeah, but I don’t want heaps of bruises like this…. DECLAN: The authorities admit that Natalie King did approach teachers but say that they don’t believe what she experienced was school bullying. So both the council and Dyce Academy deny that there was any bullying in this case. LANGLEY: Yes. TAYLOR: Yes. DECLAN: It does seem like an extraordinary position to hold though, to say that there was none. TAYLOR: [shuffles in his seat] CRAWFORD LANGLEY Aberdeen City Council [hesitates, moistens lips, appears uncomfortable] It's….. a perfectly natural um… position. What.. what has been um… said by Mr Taylor is that.. um.. Natalie King, on a number of occasions um… raised issues which were appropriately dealt with. Now… um…. it is going, I think, a step too far to say that those issues… um.. were necessarily bullying. DECLAN: Natalie's father believes that the school and council took the stance they did because it would have been simply too difficult to help his daughter. DOUG: There was 32 people bullying Natalie at Dyce. The school couldn't deal with 64 parents, 32 kids, brothers and sisters, that would be about a 100 or more people. The school would never take the side of Natalie against a 100 people no matter what had happened. No, they'd just get rid of Natalie. DECLAN: Leading ant bullying charity Kidscape says that many parents are frustrated by the way in which some schools play down the occurrence of bullying instead of taking effective action against bullies. MICHELLE ELLIOT Director of Kidscape They are not parents who are typically looking for a fight. All they want is the bullying to stop, but what they're meeting is a wall of denial, a wall of resistance, and worse, a wall of it's your fault somehow. ESTHER RANTZEN Chair of Childline Schools that are in denial are putting young people's lives at risk, and I think they need to take their responsibility seriously and if they don’t then I think there is something to be said for naming and shaming. STEPHEN TWIGG MP Schools Minister for England & Wales It is completely unacceptable if a parent or a pupil goes to their school or their LEA and they're not taken seriously on the subject of bullying, and the whole point about having this concerted national drive is to stop that from happening. DECLAN: But even with the government's drive to reduce bullying, one home learning charity claims that about 90,000 British children are out of school because bullies have not been dealt with. CHRIS WOODHEAD Chief Inspector of Schools (1994-2000) You must feel immensely frustrated.. I mean despairing as a parent if you know that your child is coming home every night refusing to go to school in the morning and that the teachers at that school are saying there isn't a problem. You know there's a problem and they wont acknowledge it, and what do you do? You complain - the school doesn't take your complaint seriously. Your only option really is to keep the child at home or to try and get them transferred to another school. DECLAN: Sometimes bullying that's left unchecked can cost much more than a disrupted education. EMMA B Radio 1 A girl that we spoke to about a year and a half ago probably, she was being very badly bullied at school and we talked to her on the phone and as is the case with a lot of these people she was very bright, very eloquent.. you know.. really charming girl. Then about five months ago we got an email from her sister. She wanted us to know that her sister had taped the interview of the show and she played it to herself every day before she went to school. Very sadly the bullies have got the better of her in that she's taken her own life and she was 16. She only had to put up with it for another.. you know.. few months and she would have had the rest of her life ahead of her and that's how serious it can be, and that is… I mean we could hardly read the email for the tears. DECLAN: One recent study based on coroners' records and reported deaths says that about 16 children in Britain take their own lives each year because of bullying in school. But because school bullying is not a factor most coroners tend to record, it's thought that the true figure might be much higher. In Neath in South Wales the Rhodes family believe that their child has become one of those statistics. MICHAEL & YVONNE RHODES YVONNE: Becky was howling on top of her voice, she just.. MICHAEL: She was shouting: "It's Laura, it's Laura" wasn't she. YVONNE: Yeah, and then I thought Laura was sleeping until I touched her, you know, I sort of patted and I could see then that she was deeply unconscious. So we phoned the emergency service. We kept her alive until… MICHAEL: We kept her alive, we worked on her… YVONNE: Until the ambulance…. MICHAEL: Until the ambulance came. And then when the ambulance came they took over then, and later she died in hospital. DECLAN: Laura Rhodes became close friends with Rebecca Ling from Birmingham. After they'd met several months earlier in an internet chat room. They'd spent most of the summer together and Rebecca had joined the Rhodes family on a holiday to Crete. When they returned, the two teenagers ran away together to a guest house in Bath. On the night they came back they appeared to have taken an overdose together, only Rebecca survived. MICHAEL: We were just devastated, you know, we couldn't understand, you know. I mean we've lost our child. You just think where do you go from here? What do we do? DECLAN: Michael and Yvonne Rhodes say that what happened to Laura in school changed her from a cheerful child into someone who was robbed of confidence and self-esteem. Within 3 days of starting secondary school she told them that she was being bullied. YVONNE: She said that some people were calling her names, not very nice names. MICHAEL: She'd come home and say to me: "Dad, am I fat and ugly?" I'd say no don’t be silly. "Well that's what they tell me I am." I'd say well you're not. YVONNE: Someone would make a chance remark, just a small remark such as… remember the time with the facial hair? MICHAEL: Yeah.. mmm. YVONNE: Someone had told her that she had a moustache. That poor girl plucked and shaved until she had… MICHAEL: A red mark. YVONNE: Yeah, marks. MICHAEL: We just felt so awful for her, you know, but what could I say? I said well I'll try to sort it out. I thought I'll make an appointment to see the school and see if we can sort of stop it basically. DECLAN: The Rhodes first appointment at Cefn Saeson School took place three weeks into Laura's first term. From the family's perspective it was anything but a success. The Rhodes say that the school didn't deny the bullying but it didn't take it seriously. MICHAEL: I said Laura is being bullied at the school, and he said: "What sort of bullying?" I said they're calling her very bad names about her weight, I said it's disgusting. And then he pointed out to me: "If you look to your left, my head of year.. Laura's head of year she's a big woman and my deputy head is a big man" he said "and nobody's bothering them." He said: "What else is there?" I said: They throw food at her in the dining room and call her 'fat batch, here have some more to eat'" and said: "It upsets her." And he said well all children throw food, I'm sure you did when you were in work. I certainly did when I was in university." Well, I didn't know quite what to say after that remark to be honest with you. Laura then got up and ran out of the meeting, and he said: "There we are, no respect for me the headmaster and certainly as parents you have no control.. no parental control at all." He said: The problem is not with bullying, you have problems at home." DECLAN: Over the next few months Laura's school and her family developed fundamentally different views of where the problem lay. The school's record say that Cefn Saeson did everything in its power to help Laura Rhodes. It says its efforts to help were frustrated because Laura did not clearly identify the people who were bullying her. Laura's behaviour in trying to win friends led to rumours about her sexuality and the bullying intensified. The school record claims that Laura led other pupils to believe that she was a lesbian. It says that Laura seemed to understand that she had opened her own 'Pandora's box' by her indiscretions. YVONNE: That's really the start of how it went downhill very quickly. MICHAEL: It went downhill rapidly from then. She was labelled as the fat dyke of the school then. MICHELLE ELLIOTT Director of Kidscape We get 16,000 calls on our helpline a year from parents of children who've been bullied. I would say that in probably 12,000 of those cases the school blames the victim. Remember these parents get to us when they're at their wits end, so we're talking extreme cases. LIZ CARNELL Director of Bullying Online You know it's never the child's fault that they're being bullied. They're not doing anything wrong. You know, it's not their fault that they've been hit in the face, it's not their fault they've had their books destroyed or their property stolen. What have they done to deserve that? They haven't done anything. DECLAN: Michael and Yvonne Rhodes withdrew Laura from school in July 2003. Cefn Saeson didn't want to comment on Laura's case ahead of a forthcoming inquest into her death. But it stresses that it takes bullying seriously. The school also said that a recent inspection report had described its quality if care, support and guidance as outstanding. But the Rhodes believed that the bullying Laura endured there contributed to her death over a year later. For schools, addressing the bullying of one child by a large group can be extremely difficult, often it's easier to work with the victim, either by teaching them to cope better with the problem, or by isolating them from the bullies. Instances of teachers taking disciplinary action against large groups are rare, so rare that when they happen they can make headlines. [BBC NEWS] A head teacher has been praised by her local education authority for suspending more than 40 pupils from school after they surrounded a 15 year old classmate and allegedly threaten to kill her. DECLAN: In Bournemouth one head teacher felt she needed to take strong action on behalf of the victim. CCTV cameras recorded a serious and very visible incident of mob rule outside Glenmoor School. PAM ORCHARD Head Teacher, Glenmoor School It had been a very shaking event. There had been quite a lot of noise, quite a lot of unpleasant aggression. And then sitting down and reviewing it, looking at the footage, it was quite clear it had gone on for a number of minutes and there had been a number of girls who had stayed there and although they probably were not actually participating in the actions, by staying there were lending credence to what was going on. DECLAN: The same day Pam Orchard imposed a short-term exclusion on all 40 girls involved. PAM: Trying to do anything else was going to be counterproductive. I didn't think that we could talk to that number of girls. I felt that if we tried to get them together they wouldn't really listen if we did an assembly or things like that, but even if we tried to do group discussions that we really would not have the impact because I think it was what we'd been saying for some time was that we did not like this kind of group behaviour, that they really had to stand up and be counted, each girl had to be accountable for her own actions. DECLAN: The decision to punish such a large group simultaneously was unusual but in some quarters it was warmly welcomed. STEPHEN TWIGG MP Schools Minister for England & Wales I think she made the right decision. I think she was sending a very strong message that bullying is simply unacceptable, and imagine the impact on one child of having 40 other children doing what they did. CHRIS WOODHEAD Chief Inspector of Schools (1994-2000) The schools that I visited when I used to be Chief Inspector of schools in England that were successful in minimising the level of bullying were schools where the head teacher took a very, very strong line, where he or she would monitor the behaviour day in and day out of the children in the classrooms and corridors and playgrounds of the school, and the message was crystal clear, we do not tolerate bullying in our schools. STEPHEN: Discipline is absolutely central. One of the ways in which children can end up being bullied.. young people can end up being bullied is if the school doesn't give the priority that it needs to give to good, effective discipline and to good behaviour by all pupils. DECLAN: When a bully is permanently excluded from school normally they would move to another school or get part-time teaching in a pupil referral unit. The Conservatives say that more is needed. TIM COLLINS, MP Shadow Secretary of State for Education I think a long-term persistent bully, particularly in a secondary school, if we're talking about a slightly older child, is someone who in the normal course of circumstances probably should be expelled, certainly the head teacher should have the option of doing that. But once they're expelled they shouldn't just be allowed to roam the streets, they should be given full time high quality education. We're proposing a national network for turnaround schools with specialised teaching, high investment to actually sort them out, get to the root cause of their bullying and actually make sure they stop doing it. DECLAN: But Pam Orchard's decision also had its detractors, amongst them some of the most influential thinkers on tackling bullying in schools. BARBARA MAINES Author, 'The No Blame Approach' I don’t think that sending the children away into some unknown response to their behaviour is tough or strong. I think suspending the curriculum, getting them in, working with them, dealing with this, helping them to understand the effects of the behaviour, to take some responsibility, to change their behaviour, that's tough, that's not soft, that's tough. DECLAN: In 1991 Barbara Mains and George Robinson wrote a book about how bullies should be dealt with. It's called 'The No Blame Approach'. The No Blame Approach brings bullies together in a group of their peers and with the victims not present get them to change their behaviour through group discussion. It's used in thousands of schools across the country and it's influence is growing. The No Blame Approach is rooted in the belief that bullies, even when clearly identified, should not be punished. GEORGE ROBINSON Author, 'The No Blame Approach' Not only do you need to keep the victim safe, you need to look at the approach that will actually change the behaviour of the bullies and again we didn't feel that punishment was an effective way to change people's behaviour. DECLAN: But those who were opposed to it say that it promotes an idealised vision of bullies and victims. MICHELLE: I'll give you a group of bullies who I don’t think you could turn with the No Blame Approach, who I know you couldn't. A 15 year old… 14 year old girl, stripped on the school playground by a group of 15 bullies who are not in her year group, made to kneel down, beg for her clothes, photographs are taken and circulated around the school. She attempted suicide. To say we're not going to apportion any blame to what you've done is madness. LIZ: I think that there are a number of trendy Wendy ideas on dealing with bullying and I don’t think that they're necessarily all a good thing. I think it's time to sort out the good from the bad. If there's no blame the bully isn't accountable and you know.. if you're not accountable then you haven't actually learnt anything. I don’t actually see punishment as being completely wrong and I think a lot of parents would back me up on that. DECLAN: Is the No Blame Approach soft on bullies? Do they feel that they've gotten away with it? BARBARA: Wow, that's the one criticism that really annoys us. The idea that to require young people to take a responsible attitude to pro social behaviours, to sit down and actually deal with this issue and put things right is not a soft approach. DECLAN: This debate is really a clash of two philosophies and each sees children in a rather different way. The no blame approach believes that by appealing to their empathy and understanding a group of children can easily be persuaded to protect and not attack a victim. The more traditional approach believes that what children need most is a limit placed on their natural tendency for group aggression. GEORGE: Traditional responses have been used since schools started and yet we're still dealing with incidents of bullying. If the traditional.. you know.. punish the bully is so successful, why are we still dealing with bullying and why are so many teachers around the world turning to this approach. DECLAN: The Anti Bullying Alliance was founded partly to promote consensus amongst various anti bullying charities, but on the divisive issue of punishment even it seems confused. In you’re your literature which sets out the aims and beliefs of the Anti Bullying Alliance it says that discipline is the last resort only to be used only in the most serious cases. Now…. GILL: I don’t think we've worded it just like that but carry on. DECLAN: No, no, it's here. But what about the code of conduct that says that punishment including exclusion is appropriate, it should be used as a last resort? GILL FRANCES National Manager, Anti-Bullying Alliance [long pause] It's very interesting how you're interpreting it because I don’t interpret it that way. DECLAN: It's just what it says here. GILL: Yes, yes. No, but I don’t interpret it as being a last resort as such. I think what's important is that head teachers and senior members of staff are confident that when rules are broken in school that they're able to use the rules and to put in sanctions when they need to, as well as use the prevention measures we're talking about. DECLAN: It would be wrong to think that all of these new strategies for dealing with bullying can be written off as trendy ideas. In the right circumstances they seem to work very well, and schools across the country are using other methods as well as the no blame approach which gets children talking about bullying but which don’t rule out the use of discipline. PUPIL: [group discussion] I think people bully because they've been bullied before in the class. DECLAN: Acland Burley school in Camden has pioneered the idea that the best way of tackling bullying is to involve the whole school in trying to stop it. This approach uses something called 'circle time'. It allows pupils to discuss as a group any issues that might concern them, and a peer support scheme trains older students in counselling younger ones. PUPIL: Bullying does happen, it happens everywhere, but we're doing something positive to counter it. DECLAN: At Acland Burghley there's an ongoing discussion about all aspects of bullying, but there's also a firm commitment that when necessary bullies will be punished. Pupils here say that the system works well. PUPIL: Everyone's aware of it, like the dinner ladies and playground monitors, and so if they see any problems they can deal with it right then instead of no one really noticing. DECLAN: But there's a wide variation on how strategies like circle time are used in different schools. Sometimes they can make the victim feel even worse. At her school Laura Rhodes felt that circle time was a public ordeal. MICHAEL & YVONNE RHODES MICHAEL: They called something I believe 'Circle Time' where they have a group of children and I think they put them all together and they discuss the problems… Laura's problems. But in this group were the children that actually bullied her. So Laura was feeling really good about this. She was discussing with the bullies how she felt. What they were doing to her had made her feel worse. YVONNE: She felt even more intimidated. Liz Carnell Director of Bullying Online We get an awful lot of complaints from parents who say that their child's school is using this type of approach and it's not working, and the reason that they say that is because quite often these cases involve some form of mediation or counselling between children, and we often hear of children who are involved with the bully in a classroom with the teacher or the counsellor and it's.. you know.. a nice cosy chat. As soon as they go outside the door the bullying restarts. DECLAN: Natalie King says she too went through a direct mediation process with one of the girls she says was bullying her. NATALIE KING There was me and her and my teacher at the time, and teacher turned round and says: "Right, what have you got to say to Natalie?" And no sort of sorrow, nothing.. just "I'm sorry" sort of thing. And all the teacher says was there, you've got your apology. See you later. That's it. As soon as the teacher's back was turned it's all thrown back in your face. DECLAN: And if attempts by the school do fail, where do you go? Well you can go to the local education authority, but many parents feel that their interests are too tied up with the school. You can go to the Secretary of State but that can be a time consuming and often frustrating process. Many parents feel that their only option is to cut their losses and withdraw their child from the school. Taylor Welham lives in Mitcham in Surrey. Earlier this year she was withdrawn from school because of bullying. TAYLOR: I couldn't sit in the lesson without being distracted, being called names with things flying across the classroom at you or anything. The boys started punching me in my face, strangled me, calling me names, just holding me around my neck tighter. I talked to the teacher and she told me it was basically my fault for being a grunger, I stood out too much, so that night I was just thinking about what's the point, it's my fault and just need to kill myself. I realised I had to go back to school the next day so I just got loads of pills from where I could and in the morning, when I was walking to school with my friends I just took 'em all and just decided that I wanted to die. I'd had enough of it. STEVE & TAYLOR WELHAM It was a half day and I got home with my brother and his friend and started feeling very sick and dizzy and my brother straightaway knew what I'd done, clicked on straightaway and said tell me what you've done because I'm going to call an ambulance, so I actually had to say I've taken this amount of pills and then he called an ambulance and I was taken to hospital. STEVE: It was only her brother's quick thinking that she's here today really. I suddenly got a phone call saying Taylor's on her way to hospital, she's taken an overdose. As I say, if it wasn't for her brother, then I don’t think she'd be around today. When you're sitting by someone's hospital bed looking at them on a drip, the doctors told you it's hopefully okay but it's still touch and go, you know.. we'll know in the next 12 hours, you start to look back on what you've done, what you've said, have you complained, have you done this, have you gone all through what's gone on, and then you start to realise that hang on, you've shouted, you've screamed, you've written letters, you've done everything, the school is aware. Why is it allowed to continue? DECLAN: Steve Welham says that he complained to the school and the local education authority but that the situation didn't improve and he withdrew Taylor from school. Merton Council which is responsible for Tamworth Manor High said that it can't comment on individual cases but that all known incidents have been investigated and acted upon. But Steve Welham feels that his daughter was failed by a system that favours the school's interests and that as a parent he had nowhere to turn. STEVE: I think the system needs to be improved with an outside agency, an independent body, not set up by necessarily the government, not.. certainly not part of the education department or the school or its governing body because unless it's really, really serious they will always stick together, they will never rock the boat. DECLAN: The government feels that the answer to that problem is already in place. It recommends the Anti Bullying Alliance as a powerful last resort for desperate parents. STEPHEN TWIGG: If the parent is unhappy with the response of the school, as you say, they can go to the local education authority. If they're still unhappy the can then go to the Anti Bullying Alliance. DECLAN: But what can they do? STEPHEN: What they can then do is go back to the school, go back to the local education authority and really press the case very hard. DECLAN: But there are questions over how hard that case can be pressed. The Anti-Bullying Alliance says it doesn't have the power to intervene in schools. GILL FRANCES National Manager, Anti-Bullying Alliance The Anti-Bullying Alliance is a coalition, a collaboration of organisations working together. We don’t have those sort of powers, and what we have are the powers of support, of collaboration, or raising the issue of handing on information, helping people to develop their competence and skills. We don’t have any statutory powers. DECLAN: And the way its set up raises questions about how independent it can be. Five of its nine regional coordinators also work for local education authorities, sometimes the very institutions that parents see as part of the problem. But the organisation says that working closely with LEAs is part of its remit. GILL: I think the important thing for us to do is to see this as a collaboration and that generally bullying is dealt with best when people are working together, and rarely would it be a conflictual situation because obviously a local authority, a school, wouldn't want a child to be hurt, and would want to protect children from being bullied. DECLAN: But don’t we need an independent authority that can intervene in the internal affairs of the school because the Anti-Bullying Alliance cannot do that. STEPHEN TWIGG: Parents can go to the Anti-Bullying Alliance and the Anti-Bullying Alliance can then take that matter up directly with government as well as with the school and the local education authority and I would very much encourage any parents in that situation to do so. The Anti-Bullying Alliance is still quite new. We don’t yet know how that way of working will operate. If it doesn't work out we might have to look at other alternatives. PHIL WILLIS, MP Liberal Democrat Education Spokesman The Government, by simply saying to the Anti-Bullying Alliance: "Here's some money, you treat it" to look to Childline or to other organisations and say: Hey.. you know.. this is something we can put into your silo and you deal with it. I don’t think that's good enough. Government has really got to say this is an issue which is fundamental to our school system. It affects truancy, it affects discipline, it affects the way in which children learn, and it also affects young people's future for the rest of their lives. DECLAN: Victoria Thompson has given up hoping that her problem will be solved any time soon. She says that her bullying is still ongoing and that for as long as she's at school she expects to be bullied. VICTORIA: I'm feeling really, really upset about it right now because I thought it might have stopped but it hasn't stopped. Bullying could be a problem that can be solved, but there's not enough support at the moment. DECLAN: Natalie King says that persistent bullying meant she lost out on an education. Later this year she'll go to court in a case that Aberdeen City Council says it will vigorously defend. Natalie will claim the council has failed in its duty of care to keep her safe at school and she's suing for negligence. NATALIE: I want to do it because I want to see the rules and regulations in schools change. I think they've got so many laws against workplace bullying and that but you've got nothing for kids in school. DECLAN: Many parents take it for granted that when their children have problems in school somehow they'll be resolved, but some families like the Rhodes feel they've been failed by the institutions they once trusted. YVONNE: All we wanted was for Laura to be safe in school. MICHAEL: That wasn't much to ask for, but obviously it was. YVONNE: Laura said: "I wasn't too proud to ask for help. I did ask. They just didn't listen." DECLAN: Bullying which goes unchecked can inflict lasting damage on young lives. The message to victims is tell someone and most of the time telling helps. But it seems we're not always living up to our responsibility to make sure that when they do tell, someone will listen. Next week on Panorama, just how safe are we from crime. Politicians can't even agree if crime is increasing or falling. Panorama finds out what's really going on. Cops and Robbers next Sunday at 10.15. If you've been affected by tonight's programme and would like support, then call the BBC Actionline on 08000 565450. Lines are open seven days a week from 7.30am until midnight. All calls are free and confidential. _________ www.bbc.co.uk/panorama CREDITS Reporter DECLAN LAWN Camera BILL BROWNE Additional Camera SEAMUS McCRACKEN GARY CARVILLE KEN GOW Sound JOHN RIDDELL NIGEL REES Online Editor GARY McCUTCHEON Dubbing Mixer IAN BURNS Production Team KAREN McGRATH RHONDA KANE Production Co-ordinator SINEAD KELLY Web Producer ALEX MURRAY Graphic Design CIARAN BOYLE Film Editor DOLORES SHIELDS Assistant Producers HOMARA CHOUDHARY ESELLA HAWKEY Executive Producer for BBC Northern Ireland JERRY ADAMS Producer ANDREW MARTIN Deputy Editors ANDREW BELL FRANK SIMMONDS Editor Mike Robinson 2 _____________________________________________________________________________________________ Transcribed by 1-Stop Express, 3 Southwick Mews, London W2 1JG Email: panorama@bbc.co.uk