Mr. Philip Arneill:

I will respond to the point about the training of teachers. I was a teacher for nearly 20 years. In respect of the primary school teachers with whom we have dealt, we are focusing on children aged eight to 13. Over 30% of teachers reported last year that they dealt with between two and five incidents of cyberbullying. When it comes to the training of teachers, what many teachers find quite challenging is that more often than not, these cyberbullying incidents occur outside the home so there is sometimes a sense of "what's it got to do with me? I am dealing with the kids within the school." From working as a teacher and working with other teachers, I know that anything that happens outside the school, regardless of where the responsibility lies, will automatically impact the dynamics in the class. Similarly, a lot of cyberbullying incidents might originate with dynamics that occur in the school or classroom and then play out on these platforms and websites beyond school. It is really important that within teacher training, there is a very clear system of defining the behaviour and how to deal with it within the school. What are the correct steps to take? Where does one draw that line of responsibility between the school and the home?

When we talk about the difference between bullying and cyberbullying, quite often, when I ask teachers to brainstorm the symptoms, many of the symptoms teachers give are very similar to the symptoms of more traditional bullying. They include behaviour change, becoming withdrawn and friendship groups altering. Very few of them identify behaviour around online use. One of the real red flags for cyberbullying are children being reluctant to go online or becoming angry, aggressive or withdrawn after they have been online. They might have been very interested in the online world or gaming and suddenly they lose interest dramatically. From a teacher training point of view, it is really important that those guidelines are established as to where the responsibility lies and how best to deal with it.