School bullying: time for a system reboot

IT HAS been a bad month for pupil conduct in the classroom. Media reports of violent assaults on teachers and incidents of racial bullying do not nearly reflect the extent to which school bullying is a reality in our education system. But it is a reality that must be acknowledged and addressed.

School discipline is a complex but important matter that needs to be managed carefully if we are to create bully-free school environments where quality teaching and learning can take place.

A public schooling system in which pupils feel it is acceptable to assault or insult their teachers and threaten their classmates with weapons, or personally attack their peers on social media networks is not conducive to learning. It is broken and needs an immediate reboot.

We need to reconfigure how our schools address pupil misconduct by ensuring every public school has a clear but appropriate strategy for curbing bullying. The law already provides some foundational measures for curbing bullying. It also assigns certain roles and responsibilities to all major stakeholders in this system, including provincial education authorities, school governing bodies, school management teams, school principals, teachers, pupils and their parents or guardians.

First, the law requires the governing body of every public school to develop and adopt a code of conduct for pupils. The code must be aimed at establishing a disciplined and purposeful environment dedicated to improving and maintaining the quality of learning. To build a bully-free culture in a public school, it is important that a school’s code of conduct be developed in consultation with teachers, pupils and parents or guardians. Schools should hold workshops that are interactive, inclusive and informative when consulting on a code. If a school’s code of conduct is to be effective, it should be a living document that is reviewed annually and that is flexible enough to respond to the changing needs of that particular school.

Second, provincial education authorities and school management teams must provide support to teachers on how to improve discipline inside and outside the classroom. There are a number of practical and proactive measures that can be taken to ensure good pupil behaviour in the classroom and on school grounds.

Third, teachers need to know how to prevent and address all types of pupil misconduct. This requires teachers to understand the needs of their pupils, to appreciate what is required in terms of the school’s code of conduct, and to choose appropriate disciplinary measures to suit the individual pupil when the code is breached. It also requires teachers to use teaching methodologies that focus the attention of pupils on the lesson at hand rather than on their peers.

Fourth, the school principal must ensure that the school’s code of conduct is applied fairly and consistently. Minor breaches of the school’s code of conduct by pupils, if left unchecked, can result in more serious breaches and, in turn, contribute to a growing culture of bullying. The principal must also ensure that the school’s code is supported by a clear disciplinary process that is procedurally and substantively fair. This process must be lawful to avoid having the school’s decisions challenged and overturned.

Fifth, every child attending a public school is required to comply with his school’s code of conduct. The code should therefore be clear and easy to understand. It should set out what behaviour is expected of pupils, what behaviour will not be tolerated and what corrective steps will be taken by the school when a pupil breaks the code of conduct.

Finally, every parent or guardian who enrols a child at a public school must support and reinforce behaviour consistent with that school’s code of conduct. Our public schooling system operates within a complex socioeconomic context, where many pupils live in difficult circumstances that may have a bearing on their behaviour at school. Rebooting our public schooling system may not therefore uncover or address the root cause of every incident of bullying. However, it will go a long way to resetting the system back to a manageable state in which school discipline is addressed in the classroom and on the playground more appropriately and more effectively than before.

It is up to each school governing body, principal, school management team, teachers, pupil and parent or guardian to take the first steps needed to build bullyfree school environments. The sooner each does so, the better.

Wilter is an education law specialist consulting through Pinnock Consulting.