Advice for Teachers
The Sandwell Anti-Bullying Team can help teachers to tackle bullying issues.
- Raise awareness about the issues of bullying
- Provide advice and support to schools
- Collect data about bullying with a view to targeting support and future resources.
- Investigate complaints
- Educational Psychologists
- Clinical Psychologist
- Behaviour Support Team
Support to schools may include
- Information and Resource lists
- Advice
- Initiatives
- Courses conferences etc
- Work with individual pupils and/or groups
- Training
- To Lunchtime Supervisors
- To teaching staff
- Governors etc.
Recording incidents
- The recent report from the Government Select Committee stated that local authorities and schools were not diligent enough in recording the number and type of incidents of bullying.
- If an incident is reported to you, it needs to be recorded and information regarding the alleged target of bullying(including ethnicity, gender age etc), the type if bullying, and who was allegedly involved.
- Monitor the extent and type of bullying and work to reduce it.
Sentinel
Sentinel is a web-based software for reporting bullying and racist incidents. It is available free to all schools an is the preferred method of data collection for Sandwell LA.Responsibilities of the school
- Make time for parents
- Have an up-to-date anti-bullying policy which parents can see
- Keep accurate and up to date records
- Develop strategies to promote a positive ethos
- To involve children in the policy and monitoring it's effectiveness
Responsibilities of Parents/Carers
- Record incidents
- Make sure that school is aware of their concerns
- To actively discourage their child from participating in bullying behaviour.
Dates For Your Diary.
- Anti-Bullying Week : 17th-21st November 2008.
- Healthy Schools Conference : 17th November 2008.
- November 17th , 18th , 19th 1/2 day sessions "Knowing When to Report Bullying and Racist Incidents"
- "We're All In This Together " Conference for Primary Pupils Organised by The School Mentoring Project : 24th November 2008.
- Youth Conference : TBA
Anti-Bullying Week
The theme for anti-bullying week is “Being different - Belonging Together”
- You should all receive a pack from the Anti-Bullying Alliance. However,resources can also be downloaded from Anti Bullying Alliance Website.
- We will be asking all school to participate in the annual anti-bullying survey. We would like responses from Y5 and Y8 pupils. (We had 700 primary responses last year but only 300 secondary)
- Don’t forget, if you want to survey the whole school or another year as well as the requested year group—let us know.
- This year, instead of a competition, we will be asking all school to participate in “The Big Stitch!”
We want to make a patchwork quilt consisting of 50 cm squares of fabric. Each square will be produced by a Sandwell school and will contain either a sewn message or picture about bullying, hopefully on the theme “being different belonging together”. We will need a 5 cm border to enable us to sew the pieces together.
The finished quilt will then be displayed around the Borough and schools will be able to use it to display at events and assemblies.
The finished quilt will demonstrate that we all want to raise awareness about bullying and want to work together to stop it.
Cyberbullying
Cyberbullying can be defined as the use of information and communications technology, particularly mobile phones and the Internet, deliberately to upset someone else.
Cyberbullying is on the increase and it is important that young people know what to do if they receive a nasty message or unpleasant information is posted on a social networking site. They also need to understand the importance of keeping personal details to themselves.
Pupils from St Michael’s CE High School and Manor Foundation Business Enterprise and Sports College have worked with the Anti-Bullying Team to produce information booklets about Cyberbullying. These booklets, which have been sponsored by West Midlands Police and BT Liberata, will be delivered to schools for distribution to Year 6 pupils and all Secondary pupils at the start of the Summer Term.
An Anti-Cyberbullying PowerPoint Presentation (assembly idea) is available for you to use with pupils before distributing the booklets.
You can download a copy of the Cyberbullying PowerPoint Presentation here.
Contact
Kate McConlough
Anti-Bullying Strategy Manager
Connor Education Centre
Connor Road
West Bromwich
Tel: 0845 352 7552