What are schools doing to stop Cyber bullying?

What are schools doing?

The Department of education has deployed a “National Safe schools framework”. The aim of this framework is to “ensure the wellbeing of all Australian students” (Student Learning and Support Services Taskforce, 2003).

The guide has implemented strategies such as;

“• Providing guidance and advice to schools in the development of written policies;

• Encouraging and promoting whole-school approaches, including the involvement of parents

through workshops, school boards, and associations representing parents, carers and

community members;

• Including child protection education in the school curriculum, as well as content that explores

discriminatory behaviours through an understanding of social factors such as gender, race,

sexuality, disability and religion;

• Providing professional development and training for school staff on, for example, methods of

countering bullying and harassment, child protection legislation and procedures (including

mandatory reporting), and identifying and understanding child abuse, including the needs of

victims;

• Providing resources to teachers on helping students to recognise/report abuse, and build

protective behaviours, resilience and optimism;

• Encouraging schools to empower students by involving them in the decision making and

resolution processes through, for example, training in peer mediation or adoption of ‘buddy’

systems;

• Providing specialist support, including for teachers who encounter or report abuse and who

work with students who are persistently aggressive, such as behaviour teachers and

consultants, anti-harassment officers, school counsellors, psychological consultants and

school based police constables; and by

• Conducting police checks on school personnel.”(Student Learning and Support Services Taskforce, 2003)

Whilst these are good suggestions, and a good start to begin to stop cyber bullying in our schools there is no suggestion in the framework to ensure that all schools carry out these policies. I believe that until the department of education is able to ensure, and check that these policies are implemented in schools cyber bullying will continue to plague our schools, as many schools may fail to implement the framework properly, if at all.

References

http://www.mceetya.edu.au/verve/_resources/natsafeschools_file.pdf accessed 15/09/10