Media Release
Playground battlefields – how to beat the bullies
The playground chant of “sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never
hurt me” does not ring true for one expert on children’s issues.
Deputy Director of the Children’s Issues Centre, Michael Gaffney says bullying is
any form of repeated physical or verbal abuse – and there are extreme cases in New
Zealand where this has led students to commit suicide.
Michael Gaffney will be speaking at the New Zealand School Trustees Association’s
conference in Auckland this week, presenting the centre’s findings on its research into
how schools that improved their school relationships were able to reduce bullying.
About 650 delegates are expected to attend the conference, which has the theme
Celebration of Governance – Where all Kids Achieve, and starts today.
Michael Gaffney says while bullying can be a big issue for schools, the research
shows there are effective ways to stop the sticks, stones and name-calling.
The study looked in-depth at the environments of Manukau’s Papatoetoe
Intermediate, Lower Hutt’s Wilford Primary and Dunedin’s Caversham Primary, and
how they had cracked down on bullying. While there were some similarities between
the schools, each one had its own method to create a better, bully-free environment.
“All of New Zealand’s schools are different. The way to reduce bullying is to look at
school relationships and by improving them, there is less space for bullying to occur.”
He says there is no one starting place to improving relationships and reducing
bullying. What might work in one school may not work in another, or may not work
at that particular time. The schools in this study used many different programmes and
it was important for the schools to adapt ‘solutions’ to their own situation rather than
vice versa.
“On the outside, people tend to think one school is as same as the next. But when you
look at the way schools develop, any kind of initiative put in place needs to be
adapted to suit where the school is at.”
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Michael Gaffney says Papatoetoe Intermediate focused on developing its pastoral
care, which was absent in comparison to its discipline policy.
“If you do not have pastoral care, there is nothing to support students as problems
develop. The first response then becomes one of discipline.”
“At Wilford Primary one of the many things they used was peer mediation, so if there
were disagreements students knew there was a group of student leaders they could
talk with to try and help sort things out.”
At Dunedin’s Caversham Primary, the teachers deliberately modelled the type of
behaviour they wanted students to use.
“The staff talked about how they had to be consistent when responding to students.
For example, if there has been fighting in the playground, different teachers should
give the same response because as a group, staff have already agreed on what
approach to take before it happens.
“Staff noticed there was a lot of improvement once they had agreed on how to
respond to certain situations. In a culture of consistent responses, the students feel
more secure.”
Michael Gaffney says one key indicator of success is when students themselves start
to reinforce expectations about what is appropriate.
“They do not need to find a teacher to sort out a problem – they reinforce it
themselves by telling their peers what is not acceptable behaviour.”
The annual conference is being opened by Auckland Mayor Dick Hubbard, while
Minister of Education Trevor Mallard will also address the delegates.
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For more information contact: 021 446 261