Issue - items at meetings - Scrutiny Request: Bullying in B & H Schools

42.1         Jo Lyons, Lead Commissioner, Schools Skills and Learning, and Sam Beal., Consultant, presented the report on bullying in Brighton and Hove schools and the work being done to address it. There is a particular focus on anti-bullying and equalities. The council supports schools assertively with anti-bullying work.

42.2         Due to a change in statutory guidance, schools no longer need to make returns to the local authority about racist and homophonic incidents, but the council has opted to work with schools to collect the data as it is important to tackle the problem.

42.3         Partnership working is a real strength in the city; the council has recently won a Stonewall award for its work.

42.4         There has been a move to develop restorative approaches to bullying solutions.

42.5         There has been a 10% reduction in bullying over the time that the survey has been carried out.

42.6         Comments and questions included:

Ø      What work is being done with parents and carers to help tackle bullying?

Schools need to regularly communicate with parents. Schools should consult with parents about their anti-bullying policy. Everyone needs to have a shared definition of bullying and what will be done to address it. At an individual casework level, there is a lot of work done with parents on both sides of the bullying cases.

Ø      It would be useful for HWOSC to hold a panel into bullying as it could be arranged to allow people to give confidential sensitive information.

Ø      Is any comparative work carried out to see where Brighton and Hove sits in relation to other authorities?

Ofsted used to carry out a comparative data exercise, but this is no longer the case. When this was carried out, Brighton and Hove performed well against other authorities. There are resource implications for schools in carrying out their own benchmarking although they are responsible for their own improvement. The council would not become involved unless there was a particular problem area.

Ø      How accurate do you consider the Healthy Schools survey to be? Its likely that some pupils will embellish or lie for effect.

The data is cleaned by the Analysis team to mitigate against this. In addition, the schools explain to the young people how the survey results are used in affecting funding for the schools.

Ø      On the Compass database, 49% of young people say that they have been bullied; special educational needs bullying is a huge issue.

Ø      The Youth Council welcomes all of the work that is going on but feels that bullying is still prevalent despite this. It is very hard to challenge bullying and the Youth Council therefore supports the request for a Panel.

The committee then moved on to the next panel request before deciding whether to take this further.