Up to 50 schools sued over bullying
School policies on bullying are just not working, says Lorraine O’Connor, chairperson of the National Association for Prevention of Bullying in Schools (NAPBS).
“These are only the cases we are aware of. There are many more out there,” said Ms O’Connor who established NAPBS after Brian Dargan, a 15-year-old from Carlow and her son’s best friend, committed suicide in May 2001.
Brian was bullied for three years and his mother, Josephine Dargan, complained to the school. She is now considering taking legal action against the school.
Last Friday, John Sweeney, 18, a former pupil of Glenville National School in Cork, agreed to an out of court settlement.
He claimed the school failed to provide adequate supervision after he was beaten up on his way to class in 1995.
Ms O’Connor said bullying is prevalent in many schools and girls are worse than boys. “It is my experience that most primary school children are not afraid to speak up about bullying.
"They are eager to do what’s right and will immediately alert the teacher.”
Unfortunately, when children enter their teens they just want to blend into the background and don’t want to make themselves the next target.
“They stop talking so it gets worse,” she said.
Ms O’Connor said all of the parents who had initiated legal action did everything in their power to stop their children being bullied.
What they wanted but never got, was an acknowledgement the school had done something wrong.
“That’s why, eight years on, all these cases are going to court.”
Ms O’Connor also believes teachers need to spend some of their long holidays learning more about bullying and how to deal with it.
“I know they have a hard job but my job does not give me a quarter of the holidays teachers have. If it did, I would spend it finding out more about bullying,” said Ms O’Connor, who went to London and Germany to find out how other countries tackled the problem.
In Frankfurt schools, parents sign an agreement that provides for the expulsion of any child found to have breached their code of conduct.
“The schools are doing children who have been bullied a favour because they putting them in schools where there are anger management courses and zero tolerance of aggressive behaviour. They really don’t want to go there so the bullying stops.”
A spokesperson for the Department of Education said all schools were provided with guidelines on how to deal with the problem. She pointed out that school
authorities were not required to report incidences of bullying to the department.
The secondary school teachers’ union, ASTI, said they took bullying very seriously but their efforts were hampered by a lack of back-up specialist support.
