Creating a culture of kindness in our schools

Bullying in our schoolyards costs the country upwards of $500 million over 13 years of schooling and victims up to eight months of learning.

Today’s report by Emily Kowal on the NSW government’s landmark policy for handling bullying represents a significant shift in the way schools are required to respond to the age-old problem of abuses of power in the playground.

The state’s behaviour expert, Donna Cross, has found that “zero tolerance” policies involving suspension and expulsion are ineffective and harmful.

While the new policy, detailed in The Sun-Herald, takes a broad approach, the notion that a culture of kindness in schools and the rehabilitation of the bully are key to prevention makes sense. The question now is whether the implementation is achievable across the state’s schools, particularly given the training that will be required for already-stressed teachers.

We know that addressing bullying is vital; research has shown that children who are bullied are at much higher risk of developing depression and anxiety in adulthood.

We also know that schools struggle to manage bullying. Often there is a lack of evidence about a specific instance, or the context is not clear, or victims and witnesses are afraid to speak up for fear of being labelled a “snitch”. Too often victims and their families feel like their concerns have been dismissed, or that the bully has escaped with insufficient consequence.

Until now, this confused response has been due to the fact that many schools have lacked a framework to guide their response to difficult questions, such as what level of seriousness should trigger an investigation, who should do the investigating, and how the victim and bully should be managed before anything is proven?

As The Kidman Centre director Rachael Murrihy told the Herald in 2024: “Often there’s two points of trauma. There’s the bullying in the first place and there’s the handling of it by the school. It’s not something that’s intentional, but it’s a significant problem.”

The focus of the NSW government on addressing bullying promptly and in a more holistic fashion is welcome. That schools such as Heritage College, featured today, place as much emphasis on teaching good character as they do on academics is smart; as headmaster Simon Dodson says, not every child is academic, but each one can be a kind person.

Moreover, if less classroom time is spent on misbehaviour, more time can be spent on learning.

The new policy does not prevent bullies from being suspended or expelled – only that those measures will become a last resort. Combining consequences for bullies with behavioural interventions such as counselling and personalised support is in everyone’s interests.

Indeed, it seems superior to the well-trodden path from suspension to expulsion, to being another school’s problem. In the worst outcomes for the perpetrator, the bully falls behind, loses interest in their schooling and is disadvantaged further in life by their childhood behaviour. If their behaviour is not addressed constructively, they may well victimise others.

No policy tweaks, it should be remembered, excuse parents from encouraging kindness in their children. The removal of social media from the screens of under 16s will help with that.

For schools, with the carrot comes a stick. The Sun-Herald welcomes the NSW Education Standards Authority’s threat to remove a school’s accreditation should they not implement the new policy and respond promptly to instances of bullying.

While NESA must ensure its policies strike the right balance between rehabilitating the perpetrator and protecting the victim, the new policy is a welcome refresh. How it works in the real world is something that will be worth watching, for all of our children’s sake.

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