Dr. Colman Noctor:

What we are doing does not work so we require anything that is creative and offers us a possible solution, be it something innovative involving a mentorship system of the older child.

It is interesting that the Senator mentioned home schooling. Some children have thrived in lockdown because they have been spared that level of persecution, and the thought of returning to that has been very difficult.

One of the interesting things that this conversation is mirroring is that nobody has mentioned the tech companies, which have a responsibility in this. When we get to the cyber topic there must a buy-in from them as well. This is a platform of introduction which they need to supervise. I work with young people in groups all the time, and I have worked in inpatient units. The more one listens, the less they shout. It is about involvement, buy-in and getting them to organically create the bystander upstanding policy from inside out, rather than trying to impose it from outside in. From the point of view of the first years coming into the school and the parents, every pupil is sat down and told this is the policy and the pupil signs up to it, so when something comes up one can say that the pupil committed to this approach and to this ethos of exploration, openness and whatever it might be. Again, it has some teeth, as opposed to being a glossy laminated sheet on the wall of little value, if that makes sense.