Anti-Bullying
Tackling and preventing bullying at Morley Victoria Primary School
Pupils learn best when they feel safe and are happy at school. We talk a lot about kindness and about treating others how we would like to be treated ourselves. At Morley Victoria we have a zero tolerance to bullying and strive to minimise the incidences of bullying and deal with any bullying immediately and in a fair and consistent manner. This includes all types of bullying including bullying linked to sexism, homophobia, disability or racism.
Anti-bullying week is highlighted in November each year through a whole-school assembly with that week’s PSHE lesson being about what bullying is and how pupils can help each other prevent it happening. School Council members, elected by each class, act as anti-bullying ambassadors during playtimes, and check that their peers are content and engaged with others at these recreational points of the school day. The playgrounds are also carefully monitored by school staff at break time and lunchtimes. Keeping parents informed of how we prevent and deal with bullying is of vital importance. The school’s PSHE curriculum, from Nursery to Year 6, includes considerable learning about developing and maintaining positive friendships, tailored to each year group’s emotional maturity and level of development.
If potential bullying issues do arise at Morley Victoria, our family liaison officer or emotional health and wellbeing manager, alongside the class teacher and Key Stage Manager can often offer small group or individual counselling sessions for pupils to facilitate both the child doing the bullying and the victim of bullying overcoming their problems and seeking ways to resolve, to work and play together positively. In our team meetings we always have bullying incidents as an item on the agenda, if there have been any incidents these are formally recorded in the minutes of the meetings. As a school, our use of restorative practices is emerging with teaching, support and dinner supervisor staff receiving training. One of our aims of becoming restorative is to encourage pupils to develop their emotional literacy, and in particular their ability to empathise with their peers and interpret others’ feelings.
This year each year group was given tasks to complete during anti-bullying week. Key Stage One focused their attention on friendships and answering the question – What is bullying? In Years 3 and 4 the children have collectively written an anti-bullying statement for Morley Victoria and designed posters. Year 5 and 6 have discussed the role of the bystander and the importance of speaking up. To end anti-bullying week we had a day where everyone came in odd socks to show that everyone is different and unique – the money we raised was donated to The Anti-Bullying Alliance.
