Principal's Page

Bullying

In response to the Federal Government's final report into bullying, all education sectors agreedto the Implementation Plan for the Anti-Bullying Rapid Review.

The Implementation Plan reflects Education Ministers’ shared commitment to ensuring that every Australian school is a safe, inclusive, and respectful learning environment. It focuses on national action while acknowledging that these actions will be complemented by jurisdictional and school level activities.

The Implementation Plan includes commitments for all education sectors and schools to embed and reflect the expectations of the National Framework for Addressing Bullying in Schools in their policies and procedures by Term 1 2027, and for schools to make these policies publicly available. CEDB Anti Bullying Policy is available via the school website and Catherine McAuley Team are developing our school plan. 

Bullying involves repeated harmful behaviour, such as hitting, pinching or hurting in any way, teasing, name-calling, excluding others or threatening them. It can have serious emotional effects. Bullying should be reported to the teacher. Parents and teachers should help children express their feelings, address bullying early and provide support to ensure children feel safe.

If your child is bullying others, it is important that you help them to stop the bullying behaviour. Make sure your child knows that it is not okay. Help them to understand what it is like for the other person and ask your child what they would do differently. Model kind and positive behaviours. Let them know you love them and will help them. If you can't work it out, ask a children's counsellor to help you. 

What is bullying?

Bullying is a complex social issue that harms people. Teachers, parents and carers, students and the whole school community need to understand what bullying is so that if it happens, they can recognise, report and respond to it quickly and effectively. 

Bullying is when someone repeatedly and intentionally uses their power or status to harm, upset or intimidate someone else. It can cause physical, social or psychological harm. 

Bullying can happen anywhere – at home, online, at work or at school. It can involve individuals or groups, and it can happen to anyone. 

The definition of bullying

There is a nationally agreed definition of bullying that all Australian schools use:

Bullying is an ongoing and deliberate misuse of power in relationships through repeated verbal, physical and/or social behaviour that intends to cause physical, social and/or psychological harm. It can involve an individual or a group misusing their power, or perceived power, over one or more persons who feel unable to stop it from happening. Bullying can happen in person or online, via various digital platforms and devices and it can be obvious (overt) or hidden (covert). Bullying behaviour is repeated, or has the potential to be repeated, over time (for example, through sharing of digital records).Bullying of any form or for any reason can have immediate, medium and long-term effects on those involved, including bystanders. Single incidents and conflict or fights between equals, whether in person or online, are not defined as bullying.

Australian Government (2021)

Elements of bullying

There are three main elements that separate bullying from one-off incidents or other types of conflict.

1. Bullying involves a real or perceived (felt) imbalance of power between the person being bullied and the person bullying them.

2. Bullying happens repeatedly or could potentially be repeated (like with online behaviour).

3. Bullying consists of intentional acts that are aggressive, negative or harmful towards another.

1. Power imbalance

Bullying involves an imbalance of power between the student who is bullying and the student being bullied. This power imbalance can be social status, age, physicality or someone being seen as ‘different’, for example. It can be real or feel real to the person being bullied. Because of this power imbalance, students who are bullied are often unable to defend themselves effectively.  

2. Repetition

Bullying occurs repeatedly over a period of time, meaning it is both ongoing and repeated.

Using threats to imply that the bullying will happen again also counts as repetition because these threats create fear and distress in the person being targeted.

In online or cyberbullying, repetition isn’t just about how often something happens. It is  also about the potential for it to be repeated and how this affects the young person who is targeted. They might reasonably worry that a post or message could be shared and keep spreading online.2

Something hurtful that is shared online (like an image, post, comment or video) can be seen by many more people than a face-to-face bullying incident. Additionally, others can share it, which means the incident can keep going, potentially forever.

3. Intentional harm

To meet the definition of bullying, the behaviour must also be intentional and harmful. This means the bullying student (or students) intends for it to hurt or harm the person (or people) they target. This harm can be physical, social or psychological, or a combination of these.

Anxiety Awareness

In his 2019 book Anxious Kids, coauthored with Dr Jodi Richardson, Michael Grosse outlined many reasons why childhood anxiety is going through the roof, including more anxious parents, tight schedules, lack of free play, high expectations and more. Now, you can add COVID-19 lockdowns and social media to this list.

There are many tools parents can teach their kids to help them manage their anxiety, including:

•  deep breathing, 
• emotional regulation, 
• spending time in nature, 
• exercise, 
• mindfulness and 
• more complex tools such as meditation and diffusion.
• But the best tool is giving your child a Mega-dose of Independence (thanks to the Anxious Generation for this term).

Independence reduces anxiety by exercising the psychological muscles needed to counteract stress. Most importantly, it builds confidence by exposing individuals to real-life situations unrelated to their fears. For example, if someone fears the dark, they could be asked to walk to the shop to get some milk.

Overall, exposure to new situations involving challenges helps build resilience, confidence, resourcefulness, flexibility, and the ability to take intelligent risks.