Josh was seven when he moved from a local primary school, where he had been happy but frustrated, into a carefully chosen school that promised small classes and the chance to thrive, says Katherine, a doctor from Sussex.
“Josh had always been so articulate – he was reading by the age of three, conversing with adults like a child more than twice his age,” she says. “It was like he couldn’t switch his brain off. We could see he was longing to go a bit faster, learn a bit more. But after a year at the new school he seemed unsettled and was talking about boys hurting and taunting him.”
When Katherine shared her concerns with Josh’s teachers, they treated her reports as Josh’s problem rather than the school’s, saying they saw no evidence of bullying in class and calling on her to challenge Josh’s “idiosyncrasies”, suggesting he was triggering problems by “always putting his hand up” or by being “oversensitive” to normal playground banter.
Katherine says each meeting that followed seemed to focus on Josh and how he was coping rather than his classmates and the behaviour he was reporting.
My husband – who had been taught in a school where bullying was part of a man-up culture – felt Josh needed a little toughening up, and my mother, who had been a head teacher, had often talked about nuisance parents who are always fussing rather than letting a school get on with its job. Her words would ring in my ears whenever I felt inclined to call the school,” says Katherine. “Josh was a happy, bright, confident boy and I just couldn’t believe – or didn’t want to believe – that he was being bullied.
He was, though, and the abuse continued for more than two years and caused the Long family untold anguish – until a visiting gap-year student saw, and reported, what was happening out of sight of teachers.
This is, it seems, what bullies so often do. Slowly but surely they not only undermine a child’s happiness (and therefore learning) at school, but also – if they go undetected – leave teachers to shine a spotlight on their victim’s behaviour rather than theirs when problems arise. As a result, it’s not only the child’s confidence that is affected but the parents’ too.
The Longs’ case is shockingly typical. Even with all we know about bullying, hundreds of thousands of children are still victims of physical and emotional abuse at school.
The focus during Anti Bullying Week late last year was the staggering number of children with special needs in mainstream schools who suffered at the hands of their peers. But reports around this particular issue can sometimes leave parents feeling the causes of bullying are somehow cut and dried: large classes, or a challenging intake.
When they look more closely at how bullies operate they become aware, as Katherine did, that in any setting where there is an imbalance of power among pupils (and where children’s concerns aren’t heard and acted on) anyone who is different and misunderstood can become a target.
Josh was small for his age, had red hair and joined halfway through the term. I can see now that there were lots of things that made him vulnerable,” says Katherine. “But it seemed to be his eagerness to do well and contribute a lot that attracted attention. The ones who went for Josh were the boys he called the 'popular ones’ or the 'top dogs’ in the class.
Maybe they felt challenged, or just irritated by his enthusiasm. But they weren’t encouraged to get to know, understand or include him. Josh says now that he felt worthless and ignored, and that it was like we’d been brainwashed into believing it was all his fault. He feels our response – and the teachers’ reaction – was almost harder to deal with than the bullying. He carries that with him still, and so do we.
Kidscape, the national anti-bullying charity, says that the multifaceted and often manipulative nature of bullying (be it physical abuse or persistent teasing, excluding or humiliation) can be a stumbling block to teachers recognising the problem and delivering a clear anti-bullying policy.
