Teachers feel 'they can't stop bullies'

AFTER dealing with dozens of claims of schoolyard bullying,  lawyer Kim Bainbridge has come to a startling conclusion.

AFTER dealing with dozens of claims of schoolyard bullying, Victorian lawyer Kim Bainbridge has come to a startling conclusion.

He believes teachers and principals are under the impression they no longer have the authority to stop the cruelty that is making life miserable for large numbers of children.

"They do not think they have the power to control the children any more," Mr Bainbridge said.

Working from his base at Swan Hill, Mr Bainbridge has developed a thriving practice in an emerging area of law: schoolyard thuggery. He has a dozen cases on his books from schools in Melbourne and about another dozen from regional centres.

"They are coming in at about one a week now," he said.

The experiences of his traumatised clients have left him in little doubt about the cause of the problem: "The anecdotal evidence is that teachers feel their hands are tied because they can't administer discipline in any way at all," he said.

He said bullying claims appear to have taken off in the past two years. So why is this happening? Victoria already has the nation's toughest law against bullying -- Brodie's Law, named after teenager Brodie Panlock, who committed suicide after being subjected to workplace bullying.

But educators and lawyers are in broad agreement that there is a critical flaw at the heart of the law: the absence of concise definition of bullying. And that flaw could be having unforeseen consequences on the disciplinary regime within schools.

Josh Bornstein, a partner at law firm Maurice Blackburn, said the lack of a clear definition meant charges of bullying were being raised in inappropriate circumstances.

"Principals are in a worse position now than if it were properly defined," Mr Bornstein said.

Evidence of their vulnerability has emerged in Victoria's Catholic school system.

"In many instances, people are laying claim to the fact that they were bullied, and are using that as a disguise, when they were only given an instruction on what to do within the school, or were being held accountable for their performance," executive director of the state's Catholic Education Commission, Stephen Elder, said.

He said the commission had clear policies to define and prevent bullying. But it was also clear that many of the factors that caused teachers stress were the normal workplace dynamics.