BULLYING IN SCHOOLS

BULLYING IN SCHOOLS: 6.05 pm

Dr Lily Neo (Jalan Besar): Mdm Deputy Speaker, I would like to urge this House to look into the issue of bullying in our schools.

The schoolyard bully in our schools is getting busier, bolder and brainier.

Busier

Awareness of bullying in our schools has been on the rise since 2002, with over 50 articles appearing in the Singapore press over the past five years. Surveys on the percentage of students who have been bullied in school appear to show that the school bully has been working overtime. While numbers and statistics on the incidences and effects of bullying in Singapore are difficult to come by and, when available, vary considerably, the available figures are alarming. The Coalition against the Bullying of Children and Youth (CABCY), which surveyed 4,000 students, reported in 2007 that figure to be 94.7%. The Singapore Children's Society (SCS) reported 25% with a sample of 535 students, while MOE's figure stand at 3.7% from a sample of 1,000 students. I believe that MOE's figures are reflective of actual reported cases, and are thus considerably lower. CABCY also reported in its survey that 11.5% of respondents indicated being bullied more than once a week.

Bolder

The school bully also appears to have become bolder. Bullying in school has so

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far resulted in one recorded suicide in 2003 and a significant number of hospitalisations. In August 2002, a Secondary 1 student was punched in the face, resulting in over 20 stitches and a corneal tear. In May 2003, a Secondary 3 student from a top boys' school was a victim of multiple punches by improvised objects used as weapons. In 2006, a 13-year old girl was viciously kicked, punched and stripped by a group of girls who reportedly belonged to a gang. Teachers have also reported a number of bullies with gang connections who appear to be more emboldened.

Brainier

The school bully has also become more technologically savvy. The four and a half minute video clip of the assault on the 13-year old girl who was kicked, punched and stripped was widely circulated. The worst is that it is still available on the Internet by her assailants. Watching this clip gave me a sickening nauseous feeling.

Last year, a classmate of a Secondary 1 student from a well-known girls' school uploaded a defaced photo of her in a blog, called her names, and called for a "mob to be raised against her". The blog received over 8,000 hits in 24 hours.

Wired Safety, a Washington-based Internet Safety and Help Group, reported in 2006 that Singapore had the highest incidence of Internet bullying among children in any country outside the US, with 80 incidences in 2005. Of the 1,100 teenagers surveyed in 2005, a third said that they received email messages that frightened or bullied them, 14% said that they experienced bullying through SMS, and 13% through instant chat clients like MSN.

Ramifications

Bullying in schools can occur in any setting and takes many forms. It occurs

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in schools without exception, regardless of socio-economic or cultural background. The various types are verbal, physical, racial and cyber bullying. Although in Singapore, verbal bullying is most common, the two emerging forms of bullying are cyber bullying and racially motivated bullying.

Bullying has clear, deleterious impacts on both the victim and the bully. Numerous studies on the subject have noted a positive correlation between being bullied and an increased risk of depression, anxiety, low self-esteem and even suicide. Several victims have reportedly digressed into becoming bullies themselves. Bullying also has a negative effect on the bully, including increased estrangement from the rest of the school and/or society, and contributes to an increased risk of the bully being engaged in criminal activity and youth delinquency. International research has shown that bullies by the age of 17 to 27 have a higher incidence to enter into crime.

Shortfalls

To effectively deal with the issue, we ourselves need to be busier, bolder and brainier. We may well have been busier and have implemented some good initiatives like the Anti-Bullying Kit and the addition of full-time Counsellors in all schools by end 2008. However, there is room for improvement in the following areas:

(1) Lack of information

There appears to be a lack of readily available information concerning the issue of bullying. MOE's website contains no information on bullying, and no links to sites that do. This is a glaring contrast to the UK's Department of Children, Schools and Families, which operates its own anti-bullying site. Additionally, nearly all

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Australian State Departments of Education websites also contain dedicated information channels. This "information hole" results in teachers and students having to approach NGOs, such as CABCY and SCS, for information. Although both organisations do their best to assist, their resources are limited, and they are unable to assist everyone, leaving individual students and teachers with potentially no one else to turn to. The only Singapore specific websites dedicated to the issue are those operated by SCS and CABCY. Both provide good resources online, but are not yet endorsed by MOE or linked to MOE's official website. A Primary 3 student could not have articulated this need more clearly when she implored in an interview with CABCY, "Have more education on bullying."

(2) Lack of training for teachers

Although awareness about bullying is high in most schools, thanks to initiatives, such as the Singapore Children's Society's annual Bully-Free Week, teachers are, to a large extent, unaware of how to deal with the issue due to a lack of appropriate training. Teachers receive no training in how to deal with bullying despite the large number of hours devoted annually to teacher training. This means that teachers are unable to spot the victims of bullying early on to take the appropriate measures. Teachers who are not trained may also not be adept at identifying cases of bullying, because victims are too afraid to speak up, while bystanders choose to remain silent for fear that they might be the next target. A Primary 6 student said in the CABCY survey, "Teachers should be able to tell if a student is unhappy or sad in class, and start action to find the bully."

Bullying in schools is often left unexposed until it is either too late - when physical violence has occurred - or as in one extreme case, when the victim

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had taken her life. This victim, an Express student, recorded the majority of the bullying incidents inside her diary from Secondary 1 to Secondary 4. She suffered bullying in school on a daily basis. To this date, this girl's father believes that she would not have committed suicide if the bullying had been dealt with properly by the school. Research has shown that although some teachers deal effectively with the problem, there are a good number who routinely dismiss these incidents as "youthful misdemeanour", or recently in the words of a young primary school teacher, "childish bullying cases". These may largely be due to a lack of training and awareness and/or a culture of apathy and misunderstanding, which is my next point.

( 3) Culture of apathy and misunderstanding

The lack of training and awareness appears to have engendered and propagated a dearth in apathy and understanding, further

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exacerbating the problem. MOE treats bullying as a "disciplinary problem", which is far too general for an issue of such severity. The issue of bullying is linked by MOE to other problems, such as general misbehaviour and discipline, and is treated as a component or subset of discipline instead of a single issue. More worrying is to view bullying as a "part and parcel of life". This gives bullies and their victims the impression that the practice is acceptable and even normal.

CABCY, in their surveys, noted that many students seem to believe that teachers, and I quote "don't care if we're being bullied".

In October 2003, one school dismissed seven severe bullying cases as being "thoughtless pranks". In a separate incident, a bullying victim reported being pushed from teacher to teacher for help like, in the words of the victim, "a ping-pong ball". A Primary Six student's

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comments drove home this point. He said in the CABCY survey, "I would not tell the teachers anything. I'd take it into my own hands". Another Primary Three student remarked, "I feel sad and hurt. Teachers should take action when they receive students' complaints".

Insufficient support for NGOs

NGOs such as CABCY and SCS face a myriad of challenges when trying to assist schools, students, teachers and parents in dealing with bullying. SCS receives some Government funding but a majority goes to their main causes of child poverty and abuse. CABCY receives no Government funding. Cooperation between MOE, its schools and NGOs has also been patchy, if not poor, with the only tangible deliverable being the Anti-Bullying Kit jointly produced by MOE and CABCY. Both NGOs can only intervene when asked to do so, as the final jurisdiction lies within the schools. Notably, many schools have made a point of attempting to handle all cases "in-house". CABCY has, on many instances, been dismissed by schools when trying to assist victims of bullying. Some schools, notably, Ping Yi Secondary School, have benefited from cooperating closely with the NGOs. Despite these setbacks, both NGOs have been instrumental in helping to raise awareness and assisting within their capacities.

Learning from others

We could learn from other countries, which have had significant successes in dealing with bullying in schools. Amongst them, two examples stand out - that of the United Kingdom and Australia.

The UK has adopted a tough no-tolerance policy on bullying in schools. Since 1999, UK schools are mandated to implement anti-bullying policies. Inspections are conducted regularly to

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evaluate and suggest improvements to anti-bullying measures. The topic of bullying has also been integrated into the national curriculum. All teachers are also trained to handle bullying cases during regular in-service training.

Australia has implemented a host of counter-bullying initiatives for its schools over the past 13 years. These include raising awareness through the use of self-report questionnaires, provision of instruction and activities in the school curriculum to enable bullying to be addressed amongst students, formation of discussion groups involving parents, empowerment through Student Anti-Bullying Committees, Peer Support programmes and the use of counselling methods.

The way forward

As mentioned earlier, we need to be busier, bolder and brainer to counter the contemporary ills of bullying. I would like to offer some suggestions:

(1) MOE could look into the implementation of anti-bullying policies in all schools, with new guidelines or modifications to existing guidelines.

(2) MOE could look into enhancing its cooperation with the NGOs mentioned, to leverage on their expertise.

(3) MOE could pay more emphasis on student welfare and well-being to help reverse the negative and pressurised atmosphere that leads to both misbehaviour and bullying.

(4) Teachers should be more adequately trained to deal with bullying. This will help increase detection rates and in turn protect students from further harm by dealing with the issue earlier.

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(5) More information on bullying should be made available to students, parents and schools.

(6) Schools should make it clear from the very start that bullying is unacceptable, and warrants heavy punishments.

At this juncture, I would like to read the excerpts of a letter from one former teacher of more than 30 years, Mr Murali Sharma who wrote to me last Thursday, and I quote, "I read in Today, 17th January 2008 that you will raise the issue of Bullying in Schools on Monday. So I want to pen some thoughts for your consideration. As an ex-teacher and grandparent, I am concerned that we are sliding down the slippery slope to ill-discipline. I am glad you are speaking up on the issue of bullying in schools. Parents have a right to know that their children are safe in school. I agree with your observation that in the past, ill-discipline and bullying have been swept under the carpet by being described as 'thoughtless pranks". I agree that bullying in schools is past toleration point. It has been so, for quite some time".

In conclusion, bullying is a problem that needs to be tackled. Leaving the situation as it is will not bode well for us. It can be said that the impact of bullying goes far beyond the classroom. MOE should sweep away the years of inaction which has caused pain and anguish to both students and parents. MOE should now take a positive step to the commitment to the students' welfare and well-being.

The Minister of State for Education (RAdm [NS] Lui Tuck Yew): Mdm Deputy Speaker, thank you for this opportunity to respond to some very pertinent points that have been raised by Dr Neo.

I want to assure her, Members of the House as well as members of the public

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that MOE regards bullying in schools as a serious matter and it is not taken lightly. It is classified as a serious disciplinary offence and we do not condone it in our schools. There is a clear policy for principals and we provide schools with comprehensive guidelines to manage discipline issues in schools. And each school then formulates its own rules and procedures to investigate all reported incidents to assess the case and find the most appropriate means to resolve them quickly.

Our approach to managing bullying is two-pronged. Firstly, we educate students and teachers about bullying. Teachers are, in their training at NIE, given training in pupil management and this is reinforced during their practicum and as they learn on the job. They are supported by the more senior teachers as well as Heads of Department in dealing with such matters. So, there is some degree, and I agree with Dr Neo, that this is an area that can be strengthened further in the years to come.

For students, we basically take an approach that is somewhat similar to that suggested by Dr Daniel Fung in an article on 2nd September 2007. He is an expert in child psychiatry at the Institute of Mental Health. He suggested a three-pronged approach to the bullying problem, the "3Ss" basically: understanding self so that the children know their strengths and weaknesses; having adequate support from parents, teachers and peers; and equipping the children with skills to build self-confidence. This is line with what MOE is doing.

We have developed the social emotional learning framework and website to provide resources to schools for the development of social emotional competencies such as self-management, help-seeking, relationship management and responsible decision-making. These competencies increase the students' resilience to bullying, plus it equips them

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with the knowledge and skills to handle different challenging situations.

Our schools have also programmes to raise students' awareness of potential discipline issues, including bullying. These programmes help students to understand what bullying is, inform them of the help channels that are available, and thereby enabling them to help themselves or, as importantly, to support their peers when they are being bullied.

Secondly, when incidences of bullying occur, schools take action to investigate and assess all reported cases of bullying. We intervene to prevent bullying from persisting. Schools take an educative approach towards the bullies and victims, and provide the necessary counselling and guidance to help them in order that they will learn from these incidents; and, hopefully, not repeat them in future, particularly in the case of the bullies. For serious cases, the school may have to resort to disciplinary measures in order to correct offenders.

To support teachers and school counsellors in managing bullying in schools, the MOE has developed a school bullying management kit for all secondary schools in 2007. I think this was mentioned to the House sometime last year. The kit further enhances the personnel's knowledge of what bullying is, how they can reach out and respond to bullying, and assist students who have been bullied.

A similar kit was customised for use in primary schools. This has been developed and has been rolled out to the schools at the beginning of this year and it will enable teachers in the primary schools as well as the school counsellors to hopefully provide better support to the victims.

Dr Lily Neo mentioned the incidence of cyber-bullying and this is certainly something we are very mindful of and we

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agree with her the impact of such incidence. Just last Saturday, I believe the Chinese papers ran an article about how a number of students in one of our schools were receiving threatening messages over the phone and they made a report to the discipline master, and the discipline master brought them to the police station to make a report. While they were there, more calls came in and the police were then subsequently able to track and find the offenders.

We recognise that with the increased accessibility to the Internet, to mobile devices and so on, there is a potential area that we have to deal with, with greater urgency. We have already provided a cyberwellness framework to support and guide schools in planning their cyberwellness programmes. The focus is on promoting cyberwellness and guiding students in applying good values when using the Internet but it also includes educating students against cyber bullying, the steps that they can take, how to avoid it, how to make reports and how to be able to get support from their teachers as well as their parents. And we will be preparing a detailed cyberwellness resource kit to complement the school efforts in this regard.

In response to some of the data that she raised from CABCY as well as from the Singapore Children's Society, I want to mention that the prevalence of school bullying can become an issue of contention when it is taken at face value without further understanding how the prevalence figures were derived, because there is quite a wide variation in terms of the survey results.

In June 2006, I believe, the Coalition against Bullying for Children and Youth reported that about 95% of primary and secondary school students have experienced school bullying. The student

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health survey conducted by the Health Promotion Board in 2006 using a representative sample of secondary and JC students revealed that about 32% of the students indicated that they have been bullied in the past six months. The Singapore Children's Society's latest primary school bullying survey 2007 reported a prevalence rate of 21% bullying among primary school students. This was the most recent survey. I think they had an earlier survey in 2003 and 2004 when they reported 95% bullying incidences. So, over the space of three years, I think they must have done a new survey and this was the reported rate of incidence.

We do check with the NGOs as to how they conducted the survey and they shared with us their findings in quite some detail. They are derived from studies that vary in methodology, definition of bullying criteria, prevalence definition and so on.

We have our own internal system which monitors the state of discipline in the schools amongst the students, including the bullying situation. Our own internal surveys showed that the HPB and the Singapore Children Society survey findings more closely reflect, according to our own findings, the prevalence of bullying reported in both the secondary and primary school - somewhere between 20-30% - and that is what our own surveys tell us.

The school offences model is what schools report and those are cases that involve hurting, frightening or intimidating others using power or strength. So, not all bullying incidents are captured in the school offences model because the school offences model captures part of what is reported by the schools. And those incidents which involve hurting, frightening or intimidating others, I would like to share that these incidents continue to be infrequent and the numbers have so far remained low.

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Last year, I believe I shared on the incident rates up to 2006. I do not have the 2007 figures with me. At some point in time when I am able to compile them, I will be happy to share that with the Member directly.

The figures that are reported in the survey represent an entire spectrum of bullying behaviours ranging from teasing being excluded to the very severe forms of bullying that I mentioned earlier. The findings, I believe these were from the Singapore Children Society, showed that the three most common forms of bullying are: being called bad names; not being befriended for a particular reason; and the bully telling others not to befriend the bullied.

I just want to end off by saying that parents are actually very important partners not only in managing bullying cases but in all aspects of education. Our schools welcome and value the support of parents when dealing with disciplinary cases and parental support will help children, both the bully and the bullied, better learn from the experience. Despite the best efforts of teachers and schools and the counsellors in the schools, there will be cases of bullying that are not reported, that go unnoticed or where the victims do not show signs of being bullied. So we welcome feedback from parents. We welcome parents to talk to

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the teachers, to let the teachers know if the children are having some difficulty or if they have seen changes in the behaviour of the students and they think that it is because of incidents happening in school. And I think parents bringing such incidents up to the school authority, to the teachers, to the principals will help the school management get to the root cause of the incidents and find out what it is that we can do better in order to support our students in schools.

So, I urge parents to come forward to talk to our educators.

Mdm Deputy Speaker: Order. I am afraid I must interrupt you now, Mr Lui, as the time allocated for your speech has expired. The time allowed for the debate has expired.

The Question having been proposed at five minutes past Six o'clock pm and the Debate having continued for half an hour, Mdm Deputy Speaker adjourned the House without Question put, pursuant to the Standing Order.

Adjourned accordingly at
Twenty-Five Minutes to Seven o'clock pm.