Mr. Seamus Mulconry:

I endorse everything Mr. Curtis said. Schools have become much more sensitive to bullying. Physical bullying, for example, has decreased, but I believe cyberbullying has increased. If we look internationally, there seems to be a deterioration in young people's mental health, starting approximately in 2012. Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist in the United States, has done some really interesting work in this area. He attributes the problem to the increased use of social media and overly protective parenting. We are, in effect, bubble-wrapping children when they are young, which means they are not getting access to the kinds of experiences that allow them to test their limits. We are not allowing them to be a little bit reckless and find out what works and does not work.

We are even seeing that happening in schools. We came across a school recently that had stopped children running in the playground. The school told the parents it was to do with insurance. When we chatted with management, it turned out there had been one complaint by a parent when a child had fallen. Children are going to fall. If we stop them from falling, it is not good for them. They need to learn their own limits. These factors are feeding into a more challenging situation for schools. Some of the challenge for society is that schools can do so much but we need the rest of society to realise these trends are occurring and try to finds means of addressing them outside the school environment as well.