Online Safety and Online Bullying

Social Media Checklists

These checklists provide advice and guidance on how to set privacy settings and other account settings on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat.

Cyberbullying – advice for parents and carers

It’s important to have regular conversations with your child about the online world, including issues like cyberbullying. This will help you to understand if they have ever experienced or witnessed online bullying for themselves, and give you an opportunity to support them and reassure them that you are always there to help.

The ThinkUKnow website is a really helpful resource for parents and carers – you can access this here.

Please read this article from the Safer Internet organisation, which has further guidance for parents and families.

Support Link to External Services

If you would like to find advice and information for keeping your young ones safe online, ParentZone has up to date guidance in order to support you.

What to do if your child sees something upsetting online

Along with the many positive things which young people may see or experience online, they may also encounter things which may worry or upset them. Visit this link for some advice and guidance.

Managing and preventing bullying

Understanding Bullying at School

Before we can discuss ways to prevent bullying in school, we need to properly define what bullying is, how it comes to be, and the different ways in which it manifests itself.

Bullying refers to the use of force, coercion, hurtful teasing, or threats to abuse, intimidate, or aggressively dominate another person. While bullying can happen to anyone at any age, it is typically experienced most often during childhood and adolescent years. Bullying is different from simple disagreements or fights; a power imbalance must exist for a situation to be considered bullying. You can find more support and guidance from the anti-bullying alliance here.

Definitions and Background Information

What exactly is bullying?

It is defined by the following three characteristics:

• Repeated: A bully bothers the same victim over and over again.
• Intentional: A bully hurts someone on purpose, not accidentally.
• Power Imbalance: The bully has more power (through characteristics such as size, popularity, age, etc.) than his/her victim.

What signs can we look out for in our pupils and children?

• Unexplained injuries
• Lost or destroyed clothing, books, electronics or jewellery
• Frequent headaches and stomach aches, feeling sick or faking illness
• Changes in eating habit, such as skipping meals or binge eating. Feeling hungry when coming home because they didn’t each lunch
• Difficulty sleeping or frequent nightmares
• Declining grades, loss of interest in school-work, or not wanting to go to school
• Sudden loss of friends or not participating in social situations
• Feelings of helplessness or lowering self-esteem
• Self-destructive behaviours such as running away from home, self-harm, talking about suicide

What can parents & Family members do?

• Listen and focus on your child – learn what’s going on and show you want to help
• Reassure your child that bullying isn’t their fault
• Understand that children and young people will find it hard to talk about bullying – try and encourage them to talk to you about what has happened.
• Reassure them that they have done the right thing by speaking up – it is brave.
• Contact school if the bullying is taking place in school
• Work together to resolve the situation – this can involve working with the school on how to help a child if the bullying is taking place in school

What should parents and family members avoid doing?

• Telling a child to ignore the bullying
• Telling them that it’s their fault
• Telling them to fight back, it could get them hurt, suspended or permanently excluded from school

What do we do to try and prevent bullying here at The Birley Academy?

We have a range of ways that we develop our pupils understanding of bullying, and why it is unacceptable. These include:

• PSHE lessons
• Whole Year group assemblies
• Anti-bullying ambassadors
• School ‘Council’ groups which have a range of foci
• An updated clear and straightforward ‘Anti-Bullying’ Policy
• Educating pupils about the differences between friendship fallouts, and bullying
• Being absolutely clear in our approach to bullying in school
• Investigating all allegations of bullying, and involving parents/carers and if necessary, the police.
• Providing an on-line reporting tool for students to report bullying without having to ‘go and find’ someone – this is picked up by our safeguarding team in the first instance.
• Encourage our pupils to ‘speak up, even if your voice shakes’.

Our Anti-bullying policy outlines what steps we will take if we are made aware, or if we see bullying taking place.

If you are worried that your child is being bullied at school, please contact our safeguarding team on: [email protected]