Anti-Bullying

What is Bullying?

Bullying is the repetitive, intentional hurting of one person or group by another person or group, where the relationship involves an imbalance of power.

A Young Carer is a young person who lives with someone who has an illness, disability, mental health or substance misuse problem. They may also be taking on practical and/or emotional caring responsibilities that would normally be expected of an adult.

 The caring can involve lots of physical care such as personal care, giving medication, helping someone get up, get dressed or to get around, or it could mean providing emotional support such as listening to them if they’re upset and looking out for them. In addition, many Young Carers are also responsible for looking after younger brothers and sisters and all or most of the household chores.
 

At St John’s we recognise that Young Carers are at risk of social isolation and bullying, under-achievement, absenteeism from school, and physical and mental ill health. Young carers will be supported and monitored via our safeguarding team. Support programmes will be recorded on CPOMS. 

Behaviour which hurts an individual or group of individuals. For example, it may be: 

  • Physical – pushing, poking, kicking, hitting, biting, pinching etc.
  • Verbal – name calling, sarcasm, spreading rumours, threats, teasing, belittling.
  • Emotional – isolating others, tormenting, hiding books, threatening gestures,  ridicule, humiliation, intimidating, excluding, manipulation and coercion.
  • Sexual – unwanted physical contact, inappropriate touching, abusive comments, homophobic abuse, exposure to inappropriate films etc.
  • Online /cyber – posting on social media, sharing photos, sending nasty text messages, social exclusion
  • Indirect – Can include the exploitation of individuals.

For more information on the Anti Bullying Aliance

St John’s Anti-Bullying Policy 

Alongside our strong school values at St John’s we also embrace the five core values of the Anti-Bullying Alliance. We challenge assumptions and ensure all staff are aware of bias. We are open minded, we listen to and learn from others and are open to new ideas. We encourage everyone within the school community to support each other, pupils and parents know where to come for support and how to support each other. Staff support pupils and each other to recognise the signs of bullying and tackle bullying behaviour. School leaders and governors collaborate to ensure bullying is tackled and strong processes for recording and following up incidents of bullying are in place. We share successes and challenges to help everyone at St John’s to unite against bullying. Finally, we invest time in staff training, monitoring and teaching to ensure everyone can learn from every experience. We continually self-reflect and improve in order to help parents, staff, governors and pupils unite against bullying at St John’s. 

We follow the ten key principles to preventing and responding to bullying in schools.

  1. We listen to the concerns of pupils, staff and parents.
  2. We celebrate difference through our carefully structured curriculum and through our programme of classroom and phase worship
  3. We include all. Pupils and parents are consulted about how to include everyone in all aspects of school life at St John’s.
  4. We have a range of processes in place to report bullying. Parents can speak to Mr Mills on the gate or can contact their class teacher via Class DoJo. Children can report via the worry box, to the friendship team, to their class teacher, to Mrs Coulter or to members of the senior leadership team who are available in classrooms or on duty at lunchtime. All incidents are recorded on CPOMS and followed up and monitored by school safeguarding team.
  5. We always believe that bullying can take place at St John’s. Bullying is never acceptable and is always taken seriously.
  6. We take action. The school safeguarding policy, school behaviour policy and anti-bullying policy should be followed. We have a number of programmes in place such as ELSA, access to The Ark and nurture programmes which support pupils who have been bullied and those who have displayed bullying behaviour.
  7. All staff and pupils understand what bullying is and what it isn’t.
  8. We challenge bullying behaviour through our safeguarding and behaviour policy and challenge stereotypes through our school curriculum.
  9. We respect. All members of our school community are role models in how we treat others.

We have a robust anti-bullying policy that is continually under review.

United Against Bullying

We are taking part in the ‘United Against Bullying’ anti-bullying programme provided by the Anti Bullying Alliance. 

This will involve asking our pupils (with parental consent) to complete an anonymous questionnaire. The pupil questionnaire has been specially designed by ABA. It has been tried and tested with pupils with and without Special Educational Needs aged 8 and above. It is an online survey and the answers a pupil gives will not be seen by their friends, teachers or parents unless the pupil chooses an adult to help them complete the questionnaire.

St John’s will receive an anonymised report of the survey findings for the whole year group that will help us to review and support pupil wellbeing.

Some of the headline results may be shared with key people such as school governors and Ofsted. Again, this information is anonymised and it will not be possible to identify any individual pupils.

Our Values

School life is based around Christian values. These values are interwoven into everything that we do from assemblies and lessons to conversations with pupils. They are not an add on but an integral part of school life at St John’s. Each half term the whole school focuses on a different value that is supported by our PSHE curriculum.

Our values are celebrated in school, children and adults who notice pupils displaying the values can nominate individuals to be photographed for our values board.

As children move through St John’s the values begin to underpin their social and moral development, helping them to make the right choices when they face challenges. Our pupils demonstrate a strong sense of right and wrong. By the time they leave us in Year 6 they are socially and emotionally prepared for their move to secondary school.

The ABA Pupil Questionnaire and Data Protection/GDPR

The Pupil Questionnaire platform has been designed with security at its core. All information collected will be kept confidential and will be encrypted and carefully stored on a secure system held in accordance with the UK GDPR (Data Protection Act 2018 – “DPA” and EU Directive 2016/680 and Regulation EU/2016/679 – The General Data Protection Regulation “EU GDPR”).

For further information, please see the Parent Consent Form and Data Privacy Notice attached. Appropriate parental consent must be obtained.

Please also see our Privacy Statement or email: DataProtection@ncb.org.uk  for any queries. 

Additional information

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