A New Focus to Anti-Bullying Work in Scotland

The Scottish Executive Education Department has initiated a tendering process to decide which organisation or consortium should run Anti-Bullying Services for Scotland 2005-2010, following a comprehensive needs assessment exercise by the T.A.S.C Agency.

The new service will seek to ensure that schools and other services to children and young people can work effectively to promote positive skills in children which prevent bullying, and can make appropriate responses to children, young people and their parents, when bullying occurs. The closing date for applications was 22 March 2005. The new Anti-Bullying Service will not seek to replace or duplicate the services provided by helplines to parents and to children (such as Parentline and Childline respectively). Such helplines will continue to be supported by SEED and promoted as the first contact point for children and parents seeking help, advice or support.

This exciting development widens the focus of strategic support and development of anti bullying practice to include social work, care and residential settings, voluntary organisations, and further education colleges, as well as schools. The University of Edinburgh, which holds the grant for the current Anti-Bullying Network, has submitted a bid, supported by Childline. A decision is expected by June 2005.

Better Behaviour

The first edition of 'Better Behaviour' was published in Autumn 2004. Discipline is a key concern for the Scottish Executive, and they want to highlight the innovations, approaches and techniques for promoting positive behaviour being used in Scottish schools and introduce some of the work SEED is developing to support the practitioners taking this work forward. Visit this webpage.

This first edition includes an overview about restorative practices, and the news that North Lanarkshire, Highland and Fife Councils are each piloting restorative practices. An evaluation team from Edinburgh University, led by Sheila Riddell, Gwynedd Lloyd and Jean Kane will work with the projects as they develop, and share what is being learned through a new SEED website at www.betterbehaviourscotland.gov.uk (see also 'Just Schools: A Whole School Approach to Restorative Justice', Belinda Hopkins, JKP publications.

The 'Better Behaviour' magazine also gives the results of the national anti-bullying competition run by SEED. Around 2,500 entries were submitted from 29 local authorities, and SEED notes that many class teachers of primary 6 and 7, and Secondary 1 and 2 had clearly made great efforts to involve children in considering bullying and discrimination. In some schools whole year groups made entries.

Bullying Research

CAHRU (1) has published a series of papers about Health Behaviour in School-Aged Children (HBSC): WHO (2) Collaborative Cross-National Study. Briefing Paper 5 (3) showed young people in Scottish schools reporting fewer incidents of bullying than their counterparts in most other countries involved in the study. Reports of bullying by Scottish 11, 13 and 15 year olds were below the HBSC average. However reports of fighting (by boys and girls) were above the HBSC average. SEED funded Briefing Papers 8, 9 and 10 which had a specific focus on bullying and also funded ABN discussion papers to accompany papers 9 and 10 (4).

(1) the Children and Adolescent Health Research Unit, The University of Edinburgh
(2) World Health Organisation
(3) See www.education.ed.ac.uk/cahru/publications/hbsc.html#5 (it is placed near the bottom of this webpage)
(4) www.antibullying.net/cahru.htm