Anti-bullying Week

Gavin Newlands Excerpts

Thursday 23rd November 2017 Westminster Hall

[Gavin Newlands (Paisley and Renfrewshire North) (SNP)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered Anti-bullying Week.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship for the first time, Ms Buck. I thank the Backbench Business Committee for granting this important debate. Although parliamentary business meant that this debate could not take place last week, during Anti-bullying Week itself, I am delighted that this debate is now able to take place and that Parliament is debating Anti-bullying Week for the first time—I hope it will not be the last.

Anti-bullying Week is an annual event which aims to raise awareness of the bullying that far too many young people experience, and discuss ways in which schools and others can help end bullying. The Anti-Bullying Alliance defines bullying as,

“the repetitive, intentional hurting of one person or group by another person or group, where the relationship involves an imbalance of power. It can happen face to face or online.”

In Scotland, the main Scottish Government-funded anti-bullying charity respectme widens that definition to include bullying behaviour. It says:

“Bullying is both behaviour and impact; what someone does and the impact it has on the other person’s capacity to feel in control of themselves. We call this their sense of ‘agency’. Bullying takes place in the context of relationships. It is behaviour that can make people feel hurt, threatened, frightened and left out and it can happen face to face and online.”

In my experience that is an important point. There will be thousands of young people at the receiving end of this kind of behaviour, but who do not realise they are being bullied. I know this through personal experience. I do not want to overstate the bullying. I was not bullied violently, bar perhaps one time in primary school. I was not called a specific derogatory name in front of the whole school persistently, but I was constantly belittled by two or three individuals. Young people react differently to abuse of whatever level. My reaction, as a fairly socially-awkward 14-year-old, lacking in self-confidence, was to retreat into myself and essentially give up on school.

Over the first three years or so in high school I had largely 1’s—A’s, as it would be down here—across the board on report cards and was a pupil of high promise, but that changed almost overnight. I am sure that the raging hormonal imbalances of my teenage years, in conjunction with the bullying, had a big effect as well. I went from loving school, soaking up the information and learning all that I could, to avoiding school, but not in the traditional sense of “dogging it,” as we say in Scotland—that has nothing to do with car parks, I hasten to add. [Laughter.] We have to make light of it. I would kid on that I was going out to school and then hide under the bed until my mum left for work, and I would bin any letters about attendance. I still had to go to school more often than not, but my heart and mind simply were not in it any more. I ended up leaving school with some at best half-decent standard grades— the equivalent of GCSEs—and two average Highers. Consequently university was not a route open to me.

It is not hard to see why an individual being bullied will have a higher absence rate than children who do not experience bullying. Research from the National Centre for Social Research confirms that over 15,000 children aged between 11 and 15 are absent from school at any one time due to bullying. Children are not only absent from school, but are struggling to reintegrate once they have returned to the classroom. People who have been bullied tend to have less education and fewer qualifications by the age of 50 than those who were never bullied. That requires us to adopt policies that not only stamp out the bullying behaviour, but help the child who was bullied to integrate back into school once the bullying has ended. Our actions to end bullying do not stop when the behaviour has ended. We have a responsibility to children beyond that.

This period in high school had the most profound effect on my self-confidence for my life since then. It has impacted on almost every life choice I have made since. A longitudinal study into bullying by the Institute of Education at University College London backs that up, and found that the victims of childhood bullying had higher rates of depression and psychological distress at ages 23 and 50 than those who were never bullied. Those who were bullied frequently while they were growing up had higher risks of anxiety and were more likely to have thought about suicide by the age of 45 than those who were never bullied. The effects of childhood bullying on adults’ mental health remained even after taking into consideration related factors such as family, social class, parenting and behavioural problems.

A lot of people who bully do so in the name of “banter,” possibly not fully realising the hurt and pain that their behaviour is causing. I would strongly encourage any young person who suspects that they may be being bullied or carrying out this behaviour: speak to one of your classmates or one of your teachers.

In preparation for today’s debate I have been sent numerous briefing papers by fantastic organisations, all doing inspirational work to combat bullying behaviour. There are too many to name, but I thank them all. I will try to cover as many points as I can in the time available. Reading through these papers is a stark reminder of the scale of the problem. The Scottish anti-bullying charity respectme states that 30% of schoolchildren have experienced some form of bullying during a recent academic term. Research conducted by the Anti-Bullying Alliance found that 40% of children in England would hide aspects of themselves for fear of being bullied. Engender, in a shocking 2015 report which I have quoted before in this place, found that 5,500 sexual offences were recorded in UK schools over a three-year period, including 600 rapes.

However, behind every statistic is a story of a young person who is living in fear due to the bullying behaviour of others, and behind every statistic is a story of a child who lives in fear of going through the school gates every morning or who is reluctant to go online due to the actions of others. Behind every statistic is a story of a young person being bullied due to others perceiving them as being “different.”

Children who have a disability are more likely to experience bullying than their peers, with Ditch the Label suggesting that 63% of disabled schoolchildren had experienced bullying, with 19% of these kids being bullied every single day.

An amazing organisation based in Renfrewshire are doing groundbreaking work to tackle the bullying that many disabled children face day-in, day-out. I Am Me Scotland work with pupils to design an innovative programme that raises awareness of bullying and help the young people to understand what they can do to help create a safe environment for their classmates. They work with Police Scotland and travel around Renfrewshire and across Scotland in their mobile cinema bus, delivering this innovative programme to local schoolchildren. To date, they have reached over 10,000 primary school children in Renfrewshire, creating a long-lasting change in our schools.

Over the summer, I Am Me Scotland launched their network of Keep Safe places across Scotland. Keep Safe places are premises across Scotland that provide a safe space for any disabled person who is being victimised while out and about. The scheme uses an app to let people know where their closest Keep Safe space is, and staff at the premises are fully trained to help that person, should they come into their premises looking for assistance. I cannot speak highly enough of I Am Me Scotland—I have met them two or three times now. They were awarded the title Scottish charity of the year just a few weeks ago. I would definitely encourage the Minister to meet the staff of I Am Me Scotland to learn more about their work. He would be amazed by their energy and drive, and it would give him the opportunity to spread their best practice around the UK.

Homophobic, biphobic and transphobic bullying is also widespread in UK schools. The School Report in 2017 found that 45% of lesbian, gay, bi and trans young people are bullied for being LGBT at school. LGBT+ students are hiding a central part of who they are, due to the fear of being bullied if their classmates found out about their sexual orientation. In research undertaken by LGBT Youth Scotland, less than half of the respondents said they would feel confident reporting homophobic, biphobic or transphobic bullying in schools, highlighting that pupils are not confident that teachers and schools will be able to deal with their bullying. LGBT Youth Scotland calls for a dedicated fund for initiatives to prevent and address homophobic, biphobic and transphobic bullying in schools, including training for teachers. It is a no-brainer—they are right. We need to offer more support to these young people, and we can take inspiration from the work of Diversity Role Models, LGBT Youth Scotland and others who are working in our schools to eliminate this form of bullying.

Diversity Role Models provides a range of storytelling workshops to help schools create an environment where everyone feels safe. It encourages schoolchildren to celebrate being different and is achieving fantastic results; 96% of young people who have attended one of the workshops say that they would treat an LGBT+ person with more respect in the future.

Young women are also far more likely to experience bullying, especially sexist bullying, than other students. Children in Scotland reports that sexualised bullying has been described as a regular occurrence in our schools. That complements a poll of 16 to 18-year-olds that found that 29% of girls experienced unwanted sexual touching at school, and that a further 71% said they had heard sexual name-calling towards girls at school on a daily basis. Sexual harassment in our schools undermines the dignity and safety of girls. It negatively impacts on how these young women perceive themselves and contributes to gender stereotyping, which will sadly follow them throughout their lives. Unfortunately, in Scotland schools are not required to collect data on sexist bullying, unlike with racist bullying. Engender in Scotland believes that that should be a priority to enable us to understand better the problem that too many young girls are experiencing.

We also have to take a whole-school approach that tackles the gender inequalities in schools. School policies, management processes and teacher training must all specifically address the problem of negative gender stereotypes and sexist bullying. Not only will that help us to address sexual harassment in schools, but it will be an effective preventive approach in helping to stop those stereotypes growing and leading to violence later in life.

The Race Relations Act 1976 states that schools and governing bodies have a duty to ensure that students do not face any form of racial discrimination, including attacks and harassment. However, despite the positive intentions behind that legislation, too many children are still being targeted because of the colour of their skin or their ethnicity. Last week, a poll by the Diana Award found that 61% of school staff had witnessed bullying that resulted from racism. That is a pretty shameful state of affairs in 2017 and it highlights how far we have to go to create an environment where racism does not exist in our schools.

I want to expand on the prevalence of bullying behaviour, as I believe that if we want to pursue effective preventive strategies in combatting bullying we must fully understand this behaviour, which is causing real harm to young people throughout the UK. A 2015 research report by the Department for Education highlights that one child in every classroom will be bullied every day, unable to escape the torment, and that children who say they are bullied every day are three times as likely to be excluded from school as children who are not being bullied. I hope that when he sums up, the Minister can address that point head-on. Why, all too often, are we still failing those who are being bullied? Why are we excluding those who are being bullied from our schools? What can be done to prepare our schools better to support those who are being bullied rather than excluding them?

Some bullying behaviour is as old as formal education itself, but we need to be aware of the new opportunities to bully in today’s digital age. Cyber-bullying, usually through social media and messaging, means that bullying can now be extended beyond the school gates and into the safety of someone’s home. It is a relatively new phenomenon, but in practice it means bullying through the use of electronic means and includes the spreading of malicious rumours, sending hurtful texts, emails or post, sharing harmful pictures or video content, manipulation, bribery and impersonation. Bullying UK reports that the number of young people seeking assistance with regard to cyber-bullying is increasing all the time. More people are searching for that form of bullying on its website, with more than 2 million views in the last year alone.

Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat and others all have a responsibility to tackle cyber-bullying. Although Facebook in particular has taken welcome steps of late, most social media responses are implemented to respond to problems once they have occurred, when often the damage has already been done, and are therefore of limited effectiveness. We must therefore look beyond social media companies for solutions, and harness the latest technologies to combat cyber-bullying, such as the SafeToNet app and others like it. That acts like a moderator, although it is exponentially quicker than any human moderator. Nevertheless, I am keen to learn what discussions the Minister has had with the major social media providers about what they are doing to create a safer online space for all our young people.

As I touched on earlier, there is a direct link between being bullied and the quality mental health. A study into users of child and adolescent mental health services in London found that more than 61% of participants reported being bullied earlier in their lives. Being the victim of bullying also significantly increases the chances of an individual experiencing depression later in life by well over 50%. Respectme points out that the impact of bullying can last even when the behaviour has stopped. That is particularly true when we consider some of the health difficulties that young people face because of the horrible and stressful experiences that they have gone through.

Sadly, there is a clear link between bullied teenagers and suicide. Ditch the Label, an international charity, published research in 2014 showing that one in 10 teenagers bullied at school had attempted to commit suicide, with a further 30% committing self-harm. Furthermore, studies have found that half of the suicides among young people were related to bullying. Will the Minister commission research into the impact that bullying can have on mental health at various stages in people’s lives?

Unfortunately, certain schools are better at recognising bullying and implementing effective prevention strategies than others, and quite frankly that is not good enough. I know this from my own local area, where it seems to me that some schools do not have a good enough level of preventive services or support. Every child who is being bullied and who is at risk of self-harm should receive the same high level of care and attention regardless of what school they attend. In relation to that, research published during Anti-bullying Week found that 36% of children do not believe they learn enough about bullying and what to do if they experience bullying themselves. I believe that government—I include all devolved Governments in this, given the devolved nature of education—has a key role in addressing what amounts to this postcode lottery in the approach to bullying. The Government must ensure that all teachers and support staff in our schools have the appropriate training and skills to recognise incidences of self-harm and to help those students. That is the absolute minimum level of care that we should be willing to accept for our children.

I hope that following this debate we, and more importantly the Government, realise that we are not dealing with bullying as effectively as we should be. I hope the Government listen to the variety of organisations that I have referenced, and many that I have not been able to, and formulate a more effective approach to bullying that can help us to deal better with it and its consequences. That includes undertaking large-scale surveys into the mental health and wellbeing of school-age young people, including specific questions on bullying. When summing up, the Minister should commit to reversing the Government’s cuts—he will probably disagree —to mental health services in England. Recent reports suggest that mental health spending is being cut by £4.5 million in five English regions this year. Ending bullying has to be a priority for this Government and the Governments across these islands, and that includes prioritising mental health services.

As I said at the start, Anti-bullying Week was last week. This year its theme encouraged us all to celebrate being different. I have spoken about the fact that schoolchildren who are perceived as different are more likely to be bullied. That creates a situation where more than half of teenagers worry about being seen as different, with 40% of those young people hiding aspects of themselves for fear of being bullied. We all tell our kids to celebrate diversity and to take pride in being different, but the reality on the ground is that young people are scared of being seen as different for fear of being bullied. To promote last week’s campaign, young people were encouraged to wear odd socks on the day as a way of celebrating diversity in our classrooms and across society.

No one is born destined to be a bully. No one sets out in life to target diversity and to see what makes us all different as a weakness. We are in a privileged position that enables us to influence younger children’s behaviour, and we should use that position of power to celebrate what makes us all different. Providing children with an equal chance to flourish in life is at the heart of everything we do and should do. However, the system is failing too many children from all backgrounds. We are failing to offer protection to our children, and the consequences of that are long-standing and often lifelong. None of us wants to live in a society in which kids are frightened about entering the school gates in the morning or logging in online.

Creating a society in which bullying does not exist will not be easy—at the moment, it almost seems like an impossible goal—but we as lawmakers have a duty to aim for just that. We have a duty to listen to young people about their experience and to do what can be done to create a safe environment for all our children. We have a duty to support policies that prevent bullying from occurring in the first place. We are currently failing in that duty, but with commitment, passion and cross-party support, I believe that we can improve the experience of all our schoolchildren.

--- Later in debate ---

[Gavin Newlands]

I thank all the contributors to today’s debate. We have heard some extremely powerful testimony—none more so than from the hon. Member for Ogmore (Chris Elmore), who spoke of his harrowing experience. I think I speak for all of us when I say that he is a credit to himself for coming through that and reaching where he is today. The hon. Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) spoke of the various definitions of bullying; I agree wholeheartedly that it is time to draft a legal definition. The hon. Member for East Lothian (Martin Whitfield) leant his experience to today’s proceedings, which was very welcome. He made an excellent point about the problem with labelling bullies, or indeed their victims. I certainly empathised with the hon. Member for East Renfrewshire (Paul Masterton) when he spoke of his three-year-old’s skills on an iPad. I have two young daughters with similar skills.

To conclude, we all want the best for our children, and to ensure that they are all viewed equally and given an equal chance in life. On that basis, I urge the Minister to meet with anti-bullying organisations and to draft a new, properly-funded anti-bullying strategy to take the issue forward. I thank all Members, and you, Ms Buck. I certainly hope that this is not the last time that we debate Anti-bullying Week. I hope that this becomes an annual debate, to check our progress towards removing the scourge of bullying from our schools.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered Anti-bullying Week.