A desire to protect the reputation of Scottish schools is contributing to the widespread under-reporting of bullying, critics have warned.
It comes after data revealed that recorded rates - based on calculating official reports as a percentage of pupil rolls - are close to zero in many local authority areas.
Freedom of Information (FOI) figures show Clackmannanshire Council logged just four incidents across its four secondary schools between 2018/19 and 2020/21. None were entered for its 19 primary schools in either 2018/19 or 2020/21.
A spokeswoman for the authority said it took bullying allegations “very seriously” and stressed any incidents were reported according to government guidelines. But the statistics have sparked fears for pupil safety as concerns grow over online and social media-based attacks.
Parents’ organisation Connect said a range of factors were behind what it described as the “serious” issue of under-reporting. A spokeswoman added: “There continues to be a reluctance in challenging bullying and in calling it out, again for a host of reasons. This can include not wanting to damage a school's reputation or naively believing it doesn't happen.”
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Connect spoke out after a concerned individual provided The Herald with council FOI figures showing the number of incidents logged through the SEEMiS system in each of the last three school years.
Scottish Government guidance published in 2018 says recording and monitoring is “essential and can provide valuable information on the scope and scale of the issue in order to guide improvements in policy and practice”. Details normally entered on SEEMiS include the specific type of bullying experienced, any underlying prejudice, and investigation updates. The guidance also notes bullying can happen online and says staff may probe alleged incidents that happen away from school premises or out of hours.
However, FOI figures show the official numbers are tiny when compared with combined primary, secondary and special school populations.
North Ayrshire Council – which runs nearly 60 schools – logged just 43 incidents in 2019/20 and 25 in 2020/21. Based on a maximum of one incident per pupil, this equates to bullying rates of fractionally under 0.24% and 0.14%, respectively.
The percentage of pupils officially recorded as having experienced bullying was similarly low in many other council areas, with the Scottish average sitting at around 1% in 2020/21.
Connect’s spokeswoman said the figures were cause for concern, adding: “Like many organisations, we believe that there is serious under-reporting of bullying in schools.
"Children, young people, school staff and parents are not always clear about what bullying is. In essence, it is not just a list of unacceptable behaviour, it is how the behaviour of one or more people impacts negatively on others.
“The best way schools can support children and young people, as well as staff and parents, is to take a whole school community approach to challenging bullying behaviour. This means helping everyone to know what bullying is, what impact it has, and to know how to report it and how to challenge it."
Oliver Mundell, Shadow Education Secretary for the Scottish Conservatives, said: “There is simply no place for bullying in our schools. We must take a zero tolerance approach towards it and our pupils and schools should always feel comfortable in reporting any incidents of bullying that occur. It is extremely concerning that this is not the case right now across our local authorities.”
Standards body Education Scotland said schools undergoing checks were “required to make all documents and records related to bullying, complaints and serious incidents available to HM inspectors”. Headteachers are also asked to issue pre-inspection questionnaires, which include references to bullying, so that pupils, parents and staff can express their views of the school or setting.
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A Scottish Government spokesman said: “We expect all schools to develop and implement an anti-bullying policy and review it regularly.
"Our national ‘Respect for All’ strategy makes clear preventing and responding to bullying is not just the responsibility of schools but also adults involved in the lives of children and young people.
“In August 2019, we introduced a consistent and uniform approach to recording and monitoring incidents of bullying in schools, supported by guidance. All schools and local authorities are expected to be using the new approach. An evaluation will be undertaken by Education Scotland later this year to assess how successfully the new system has been embedded.”
A spokeswoman for COSLA, the local authority representative body, said there was a commitment to maintaining “respectful and inclusive cultures” in all schools. She added: “COSLA worked with Scottish Government and partners including parental representatives to establish an approach to ensuring incidents of bullying were recorded consistently using the SEEMiS recording system in all local authority schools, which included adding new sections to SEEMiS.
“We are aware that an evaluation of the use of SEEMiS to record incidents of bullying was scheduled to be carried out in 2020, however due to the impact of Covid-19 this work will now take place later this year.
"It is difficult to draw comparisons between years, given that schools were closed due to Covid-19 for some periods in 2020 and 2021.”
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