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New Zealand has a really high rate of bullying.
It's not true that 'sticks and stones will break my bones,
but names will never hurt me.'
Often, what even a teacher says to a student can last a lifetime.
That's what a number of people still think, that children just have to get over it,
and it happens to all of us,
but we do know now that there are serious psychological impacts
for children that have been bullied.
I don't know what it is about our youth culture, but with bullying it's very hard
for children and young people to stand up against their mates and say that's not on.
So they're also not likely to tell on their mates either.
So more often than not, the bullying happens beneath the teacher's radar,
but I think what's particularly distressing for the bystanders, particularly
if the student who's being bullied is a friend of theirs, they feel really powerless as well.
I think the secret to uncovering bullying is in developing safe reporting procedures
and so if schools can build up a culture of safe telling, and procedures that go with that,
they are more likely to know what's going on.
I know some schools have what they call 'bully boxes' where students can
anonymously post a note to report bullying.
Our young people's reference group at the Children's Commissioner's office
suggested an email system where students could email
a designated person in the school reporting instances of bullying or they talked about having
a text number that students could text in, because they did actually say
it was difficult to report it face-to-face.
The attitudes of teachers is absolutely critical
there has to be, within in that whole school culture, open communication
and students know that if they do report it, it will be responded to.
The principal is vital, because he or she is the leader of the school
and they're the public face to the community. So it will be the principal that
was saying, our school does not condone bullying
and we work really hard to prevent it happening
and to address and to respond to it appropriately.
We need to be doing something to support the students who are bullying
because the prognosis is not good for them.
We can identify children who are bullies at the age of 8
and we know that they have a much higher risk of ending up
with criminal convictions by the time they are 30.
We've got to just accept and to recognise that bullying happens in all schools,
but it's a risk to be managed and it's far more important now to know how to
respond to bullying when it happens than just worry about those statistics.