INCIDENTS OF BULLYING IN SCHOOLS

INCIDENTS OF BULLYING IN SCHOOLS: 4.

Mr Seah Kian Peng asked the Minister for Education in light of the recent report where a girl was stripped and beaten by her friends in school, (a) how often do such incidents occur in schools and what is the Ministry doing about it; and (b) whether there is a way for parents to help.

RAdm [NS] Lui Tuck Yew (for the Minister for Education): Mr Speaker, Sir, let me assure the House that MOE views such incidents seriously and that such incidents of extreme bullying are infrequent.

We have provided schools with comprehensive guidelines to manage discipline in schools. Within these guidelines, each school formulates its own set of specific rules and measures taking into account the student profile. The focus is on ensuring a safe school environment for all pupils.

Our schools manage discipline through a combination of proactive and intervention measures. The preferred approach is to prevent such incidents. We have programmes to raise students' awareness of potential discipline problems including bullying and to equip pupils with

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the knowledge and skills to handle challenging situations, such as help-seeking, self-management, relationship management and responsible decision-making.

Schools also intervene to manage bullying and other forms of misbehaviour. Depending on the seriousness of the offence, schools use a combination of counselling, mediation and disciplinary measures to educate and correct offenders. We have full-time and part-time School Counsellors to complement the efforts of teachers to help both the bully and the bullied through counselling and mediation. Schools may also resort to disciplinary measures, which range from corrective work, detention, suspension to caning.

Certainly, parents are important partners not only in this but in all aspects of education. The schools welcome and value the support of parents when dealing with disciplinary cases. Such parental support will help the children better learn from the experiences. It will also make the effort to prevent and resolve the cases more effective. In addition, for those bullied, we would encourage the parents to alert the school of such incidents as soon as possible so that the authorities can take necessary action to deal with them.

Mr Seah Kian Peng (Marine Parade): I thank the MOS for his reply. He mentioned that incidences are infrequent which I am glad to hear although, from my own feedback, it seems to be increasing. I want to ask the MOS whether, based on the statistics that we have collected, we are seeing an increasing trend. And if so, what more can we do from the Ministry, the schools and even the teachers?

RAdm [NS] Lui Tuck Yew: We have a school offences module and bullying is classified as a serious offence. In 2005, the average number of incidents per

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1,000 pupils was 3.4, ie, 3.4 incidents per 1,000 students in the primary and secondary schools. In 2006, this was 3.7 incidents per 1,000 pupils. So I would classify this as infrequent. The way we have approached it is not to prescribe specific measures that schools should undertake to deal with this problem, but we give them a range of possibilities and the schools will then adapt and adopt this, depending on the profile of the students. Some even resort more to disciplinary measures. Some may prefer to use the approach where they go through mediation, counselling, restorative conferences and so on, in order to try and bring about a reconciliation between the bullied and bullying.

Mr Seah Kian Peng: Just one final supplementary question. In terms of the nature of the cases of bullying that are being reported, do we see that the intensity has taken a different fold? I also want to caution the Ministry that these are known cases. I think there are many unreported cases which may not be captured.

RAdm [NS] Lui Tuck Yew: We note the last point and certainly, we are mindful that for every incident that is reported, there may be a certain number that may not be reported or classified accordingly. The incident that the Member was referring to was a very serious incident where not only was the young lady threatened, but there was possible extortion in this particular incident as well. I want to say that for most of the incidents of bullying that we come across, they are of a very different nature altogether and such extreme incidents of bullying are even more rare.