Bullying
We are committed to providing a caring, friendly and safe environment for all of our children so they can
learn in a relaxed and secure atmosphere. Bullying of any kind is unacceptable at our school. If bullying
does occur, all children should be able to tell and know that incidents will be dealt with promptly and
effectively. We are a TELLING school. This means that anyone who knows that bullying is happening is
expected to tell the staff.
What Is Bullying?
Bullying is defined as deliberately hurtful behaviour, repeated over a period of time, where it is difficult for
those being bullied to defend themselves. The three main types of bullying are:
- physical (hitting, kicking, theft)
- verbal (name calling, racist remarks)
- indirect (spreading rumours, excluding someone from social groups).
Bullying can be:
- Emotional Being unfriendly, excluding (e.g. telling other children not to play with someone), tormenting(e.g. hiding books or making threatening gestures.
- Physical Pushing, kicking, hitting, punching or any use of violence.
- Racist Racial taunts, graffiti, gestures, other bullying behaviour focussed on issues of race.
- Sexual Unwanted physical contact or sexually abusive comments.
- Homophobic Bullying behaviour focussed on sexuality, lesbian, gay, bi-sexual and transgender (LGBT).
- Heritage Bullying behaviour focussed on customs and culture, including Gypsy, Roma, traveller communities.
- Home Bullying of young carers or looked after children or otherwise related to home circumstances.
- Verbal Name-calling, insulting others, spreading rumours, teasing, intimidation
- Online/cyber Bullying via any area of the internet such as email and internet chat room misuse or misuse of social media such as Facebook; threats via text messaging or phone calls; misuse of associated technology i.e. camera or video
- Disability Bullying behaviour focused Special Educational Needs or Disability (SEND).
- Mental Health Bullying behaviour using terms related to a person’s mental state.
- Religion Spoken comments, written notes, emails, web postings etc. that highlight an individual’s religion or culture with the purpose of mocking them for cultural or religious difference.
- Sub Culture Bullying behaviour focussed on a type of culture that exists outside or on the fringes of mainstream or popular culture, usually under the domain of one or more subcultures.
- Prejudice-based/ discriminatory bullying. Bullying behaviour may be a result of prejudice that relates to perceived or actual differences.