Big Brother plans won’t stop bullying

PRESSURES previous generations could not have imagined bear down daily on today’s schoolchildren.

Once, bullies could reach no further than the family front door but social media has smashed down even that barrier.

Where once cigarettes were about as taboo as it got, now children are exposed to the pernicious temptations of drugs at younger and younger ages.

It is therefore absolutely right that schools adapt their approach to pastoral care to move with the fast-changing times. But there is a danger that schools can unwittingly step into dangerously intrusive territory.

There is more than a whiff of Big Brother about, as we report today the gathering of pupils’ details on a database that can be shared around electronically.

Is information about parents’ financial circumstances, for instance, really a key tool in the fight against bullying?

The SNP’s flagship Named Persons scheme was intended to foist a state snooper on every child in the land. It hit a fatal problem when its key plank – the secret sharing of intimate data without the knowledge of the families concerned – was ruled illegal.

This new data-gathering system, already being piloted, seems dangerously close to this same murky territory.

Anti-bullying initiatives are welcome, of course. But for them to be truly successful, they must have the full support of parents. That means they must be fully discussed, not cooked up in back rooms and implemented in the shadows.