Professor Shelley Hymel:

The Deputy asked about different types of bullying and whether it is important to identify those types. Research has been done and teachers and schools seem to be most concerned about physical and cyberbullying. In fact what children tell us is the commonest types of bullying are much more subtle. These are the social and relational types of bullying, the teasing etc. These are difficult because they are in a kind of grey zone. Teachers do not know if the children are teasing each other for fun or if they are really trying to publicly humiliate people. It is useful to identify those but to target specific programmes at them does not seem to be critical. We have to do the larger picture of trying to stop the whole thing.

As to the Deputy’s comments on how children think, we know that children who bully others do something that is now being dubbed as moral disengagement. They justify and rationalise that behaviour. That has not been prioritised to date in the intervention although there are two promising studies showing now that simple additions of components of anti-bullying programmes that address moral disengagement and create empathy are very effective. Both of those things are important, therefore.