Schools: Bad Behaviour

Lord Bishop of Leicester Excerpts

Tuesday 25th March 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

The noble Baroness is quite right: we have indeed funded BeatBullying, the Diana Award, Kidscape and the National Children’s Bureau to deliver training for schools to prevent and tackle all types of bullying based on prejudice and intolerance. Tackling all types of bullying is one of our top priorities. Each of the projects will be evaluated to measure the impact of the training on reducing bullying overall. Due to the relatively small numbers involved, it is unlikely that these evaluations will measure the impact on specific groups of children but we believe that the programme should, for instance, have a significant impact on reducing any bullying of Gypsy, Roma or Traveller children.

[The Lord Bishop of Leicester]

My Lords, in view of the Minister’s clear endorsement of the policy of positive reinforcement of good behaviour, does he agree that we should be doing much more to promote a culture of mutual respect more widely in society so that the benefit of the positive work of many schools is not lost when our children step out of the school gate?

[Lord Nash]

I agree entirely with the right reverend Prelate. I know that the church has a particularly strong record of promoting community cohesion across its schools. A culture of mutual respect and of respecting other races and religions is essential to a modern school.