The outcome of the Federal Government’s rapid review into anti-bullying is set to be announced soon, with the goal being to establish a national framework for responding to bullying.
The review, championed by the Department of Education and co-chaired by Dr Jo Robinson AM and Dr Charlotte Keating, is examining current strategies to determine what is and what is not working for Australia’s students.
A national standard for responding to bullying would mean no matter what school a bullied child goes to, the same support will be offered.
Speaking to The Catholic Weekly, two education academics from Australian Catholic University said, while creating a framework is a good start, it likely won’t address the root causes of bullying.
Associate Professor Paul Kidson said the precursors to negative behaviour are often found in a school’s culture, which may foster unkind behaviour or not properly address instances of bullying.
He said teaching children to treat each other respectfully required a “conversion of the soul process,” which Catholic and other faith-based schools already understand well.
“It is the constant renewal of an understanding about who we are as people created in the image of God and treating one another accordingly,” he said.
“We have a really good, positive story to frame it around, which is that dignity of humanity.”
Dr Kidson said children may not always get along with one another but individual actions, even if unkind, need not necessarily qualify as bullying.
“Bullying is a consistent, persistent, targeted, deeply hurtful and intentionally so, set of behaviours and that manifests in quite significant physical as well as psychological impact,” he said.
“We’ve got to be careful we don’t minimise the legitimacy of those really serious traumatic moments by saying every disagreement…is bullying, because that’s not the same thing.”
Researcher in inclusive education Dr Matthew White said issues typically arose among students who find it challenging to resolve conflict and solve problems, which then escalate.
“Often, it’s how schools respond to young people not being nice to one another or being unkind,” he said.
“Often schools miss those opportunities where young people are unkind to each other, and then it escalates into full blown bullying.”
Both academics said if the rapid review formulated a national standard for responding to bullying, it would be a good start to tackling the underlying issues.
Dr White said the national framework may only cover the very basic elements without addressing contributing factors.
Dr Kidson said the review should be “crystallising some of the areas we should be prioritising” even though he conceded any legislation will not change the content of people’s character.
“Seeing those opportunities every chance that we get, means that even from this miserable context of bullying, we’ve got an opportunity to create a positive impact by saying the reason why we want to do this is because you are created in the image of God,” he said.
