Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 5 November 2020

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Education and Skills

Bullying in Schools: Discussion

Photo of Aodhán Ó RíordáinAodhán Ó Ríordáin (Dublin Bay North, Labour) | Oireachtas source

The witnesses mentioned Finland. I am always interested when people mention that country, which is very different from Ireland. It has a different education system, fundamentally underpinned by the radical idea of equality. It does not have the multitude of patrons that we have here. When the relevant legislation was introduced in 2013, it was considered slightly controversial because we were asking schools with a religious ethos to put in place anti-homophobic and anti-transphobic policies which, it could be suggested, were not in keeping with their ethos. Is there evidence of the nature of bullying changing from school to school here? In Ireland, we disproportionately separate children and decide that difference is important. Approximately 17% of children attend single-gender schools. One third of Irish second-level schools are single gender. I have already mentioned the religious dimension.

We separate children on the basis of income. Many other European countries are like that. Are there different dynamics of bullying in different types of school and is the way to address it different? Is addressing bullying now different to how it was 20 years ago because of the nature of social media? I know the witnesses will say yes. Would the witnesses agree that it can be difficult for a school to tackle bullying regardless of resources because it does not stay in the school? There used to be a time when a child went home from school where the bullying took place and back into his or her family's embrace, and had to endure or worry about it the next year. Now it follows the child via a mobile phone, smartphone or other connectivity that young people have. It is not necessarily something that they can switch off, or it is more difficult to.

The next question that I have is about what bullying actually means. Some parents do not understand the nature of bullying and what it means. A fight, scrap or name-calling can happen in a school but that is not bullying. Bullying is a repeated action over a period of time. It is about power. Sometimes many interactions between a school authority or parent body are about incidents which are called bullying but are not bullying. I know Senator O'Loughlin had to go but I am interested in what she said about the person who is the bully or is called the bully, how that person identifies and views himself or herself and how our policies can get that person to change his or her behaviour. I know we have this no-blame approach that has been used in certain circumstances and in certain schools. Parents do not like it because they want a perpetrator and a victim. If their child has been victimised, they will then say that that person has done it, but if one stands back from it, both children are victims. One child is trying to act out something that he or she feels gives him or her power in a dysfunctional, destructive way and that needs to be analysed and corrected, because that child is feeling hurt as much as the child who is on the receiving end of it.

I know I am asking a lot of questions but I will give the witnesses time to respond. Parents are a significant part of the answer. What strategies do the witnesses feel have worked? Children do not live in schools. Regardless of whether there was or was not connectivity with online devices, parents have to accept that children live in a community and a family, so school is only one element of their lives and cannot solve all their problems. Parents also need to realise that confrontational, humiliating behaviour, if it has come into our culture, which I believe it has more than in the past, will be identified, copied and repeated by children in their own lives and interactions. Parents have a powerful role in finding solutions.

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