Aisling Dolan (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

It would be great to have some sort of word for our perfect school. I am thinking of a sort of champion school or advocacy school in each of our regional areas. There would be kudos for the school in being open and handling these things well. Sometimes it is unfortunately seen as a stereotypical weakness if this is being talked about. Parents might say they do not want to send their children to that school whereas we really should be embracing that and seeing as a really positive thing that children are feeling confident to speak out, to speak with their teachers and that it is being tackled. My concern would be around when schools do not talk about it and when it is solely about the academic marks children achieve. That is really where I want to get to with these inspectorate reports and this idea of a champion school. Maybe the Department might think about how to recognise and acknowledge schools that are really effective in this way such that it becomes more normal and natural and that we are always talking about tackling bullying because it happens all the time.

I probably do not have any more time. The other question I had was about teacher training.