Children and young people's voices matter: progress report - January 2020

Bullying

9 respectme, the national anti-bullying service, will continue to support the roll out of the anti-bullying guidance ‘Respect for All: The National Approach to Anti-Bullying for Scotland’s Children and Young People’. Work will also continue with local authorities and other organisations to build confidence and capacity to address bullying effectively.

All local authorities in Scotland have now worked with respectme to update their anti-bullying policy for schools.

respectme provides direct support to local authorities, youth groups and all those working with children and young people to build confidence and capacity to address all types of bullying effectively, aligned to ‘Respect for All’. respectme is jointly managed by the Scottish Association for Mental Health (SAMH) and LGBT Youth Scotland.

It is the responsibility of head teachers, teachers, other school staff and local authorities to decide how to address bullying in their schools. We expect that all local authorities have an anti-bullying policy that covers all of their schools/establishments. Each school/establishment should develop and implement an anti-bullying policy in line with this. The policy should indicate how the issue of bullying will be raised within the curriculum and how incidents will be dealt with and recorded.

10 We will support local authorities to implement the consistent and uniform approach to recording and monitoring incidents of bullying in schools using SEEMiS, the school’s management information service.

The full roll out of the new national approach to recording and monitoring incidents of bullying was completed at the start of the 2019/20 academic year. All schools are now expected to be using the new recording procedures.

As the new approach has only just been rolled out across the country, it is too early to say what the new recording and monitoring data is providing to schools and local authorities on types of bullying incidents. However, we are clear that this data should not be analysed by itself. The local context, professional judgement and other relevant information should be considered alongside the statistical evidence.

We will undertake an evaluation in 2020-21 to make sure that the new approach to recording and monitoring bullying incidents is meeting the needs of children and young people and is an effective and efficient tool for school staff to use. This will be taken forward by the Scottish Advisory Group on Relationships and Behaviour in Schools (SAGRABIS) which is jointly chaired by the Scottish Government and COSLA. All of the major teaching unions in Scotland are represented on SAGRABIS. It is the forum where members can provide advice to local and national government on behaviour and relationships in schools.

11 We will work with local authorities on prevention and appropriate interventions in response to incidents of bullying being highlighted through the new recording and monitoring process.

We will continue to work with local authorities on this action through SAGRABIS. respectme is a member of this working group.

respectme continue to support local authorities, youth organisations and sports clubs to review and develop policies and ensure that they are in step with ‘Respect for All’ and reflect current best practice. This includes reviewing, developing, implementing and evaluating relevant local anti-bullying policies which stakeholders have been consulted on. respectme also provide training, information and support with guidelines, procedures and monitoring.