Celia Walden School bullies have the upper hand

If the statistics prove anything, it’s that a lot of parents are raising bullies

Iam not sure exactly when it was that adults and lawyers co-opted the term “bullying” – turning it into the kind of trigger word that immediately brought on concerns of over-sensitivity – but it was, to some extent, reassuring. Surely now that adults were recognised as being afflicted by the same noxious forces as schoolchildren, something would be done and bullies young and old stamped out? Everything we’ve read since supported this notion: new codes of conduct were implemented in work places and schools alike and yet the statistics have continued to rise, with adults as with children.

Yesterday, the most alarming yet came to light: 46per cent of British schoolchildren have worried about going back to school this week because of bullying. The survey, published by the Diana Award, found that out of the 1,003 secondary-age children questioned in August, 60per cent said they have been bullied at school, 39per cent claimed the bullying had affected their school grades, and 38per cent their attendance at school. Just over half said it had made them less likely to put their hand up in class. So whatever is being done, it clearly isn’t enough.

It’s tempting to shrug and sigh: “Well, what are you going to do? It’s all down to social media, isn’t it?” And, of course, it is. Social media took the petty small stuff and put it on the local, national and world stage. It gave tiny tormentors and oppressors their own Tannoy systems, and with those came bigger audiences, bigger laughs and – crucially – power. Social media made celebrities of the bully. And they’ve probably learnt from the best, emulating the playground taunts, tweets and tactics of world leaders like Trump, Kim Jong-un and, well, if not quite Putin himself (like the chief bully we all remember from school, the Russian president leaves the mucky stuff to his underlings), then certainly his twin henchmen, foreign minister Sergey Lavrov and press secretary Dmitry Peskov.

The Commons has been so rife with bullying that a new allegation seems to surface every week. Last weekend, it was Keith Vaz, who was accused of bullying Commons clerks. Earlier this year, it was the Speaker himself, John Bercow, who stood accused by a former private secretary. MPS have one of the least covetable jobs going, yes, but you could be forgiven for thinking that those in positions of power were also prone to being bullies.

So what’s to be done? Well, I hope that initiatives such as the Diana Award’s freshly launched and celebritypacked #Back2school campaign will help highlight the issue, and the training of anti-bullying ambassadors in schools will undoubtedly help, but I

suspect the real answer is closer to home – namely, with the parents.

Because if these statistics tell us anything, it’s that a lot of people are raising bullies. And, yes, social media and outside influences are powerful, but I like to think that parents are, too. They can’t expect schools to raise their children for them, but they could and should urge them to adopt a zerotolerance policy, as well as encourage them to implement a series of smaller measures, like banning mobile phones in schools – as the French have done as of yesterday.

Of course, their noses will be pressed back up against the screen from the moment they get home, but it might help children to feel less fearful if they know that, for a few hours, they will be in a place that spares them the vitriolic echo chamber of social media. It might take away the immediacy of the sting when they are stung, and it might also – just a little silver lining here – free up some space in their minds to learn.

Last summer, I witnessed first hand how detrimental bullying can be. A close friend’s 10-year-old son had thought it would be funny to post a video of himself dancing to Bruno Mars’s 24K Magic online. He didn’t care that he looked goofy, he hadn’t even registered the small amount of puppy fat he was still carrying, and when his school friends saw the clip, they gave him the approbation he craved. Then the school bully heard about the post.

He did what all bullies do when they smell fresh meat: he swooped and he preyed. “Watch that fat dance!” was his chosen caption. Clever that. And the clip went around the school, gathering casual viciousness as it went. His mum and the school did what they could to shut it down, but over the course of the summer that boy went from gregarious and free-spirited to self-conscious and introverted. His mother said something that stuck with me: “He’s never going to dance in front of the mirror and think ‘God, I look cool’ again.”

Which was heartbreaking. Though not as heartbreaking as the realisation that from that moment on, her boy would have good reason to dread the start of every new school term.