Parents want more severe punishments for bullies, UniSA study finds
PARENTS want schools to punish bullies more severely instead of focusing on making victims more resilient, a UniSA study has found.
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PARENTS want schools to punish bullies more severely instead of focusing on making victims more resilient, a UniSA study has found.
More than half of parents surveyed said their children had been bullied and many were disappointed by the action taken by schools.
They also called for teachers to recognise non-physical forms of bullying such as social exclusion, closer supervision of students, and better communication with parents.
The study comes in the wake of a State Government policy that would allow the Education Department to force serial bullies to move to schools of its choosing.
“Remove the child from the playground each time an incident occurs,” one surveyed parent said.
“My son was moved into a new class halfway through the term, whilst the group of boys involved in the bullying all remained together,” another said.
A third said: “The school chose to ignore the situation and turn a blind eye as the bully was a very intelligent student and the school didn’t want to disadvantage her in any way.”
About 160 parents of public school students in Years 5 to 10 responded from around the country. Study author Professor Ken Rigby, above, yesterday said that in 40 per cent of cases, parents believed action taken by schools “either made no difference or created even more problems for their children”. However, in the paper published in the Educational Review journal, he cautioned that parenting styles may cause some to overreact.
“There is evidence that some bullied children are more likely than others to be overprotected in families … The possibility therefore remains that a predisposition to react overprotectively and be critical of the school may in some cases predate and affect the judgments parents may make of their school’s response to bullying,” he wrote.