Beat Bullying with ABC

Here is the article written about us, by our lead teacher Miss Higgins that appears in this month’s ‘Primary Plus’ newspaper.

Beat Bullying with ABC
by Claire Higgins – ABC Leader

Bar Hill Primary School has had an anti-bullying council since 1999. We work to try and promote empowerment and resilience. The council’s goal is to ensure that every child at Bar Hill leads a happy school life. A goal that is also reflected in our charter of rights, ‘Every child has the right to be happy’.

The council is made up of 8 children from years 5 and 6, who are elected on in the last term of year 4 by their peers. We try to provide training in listening skills and negotiation so that they are fully equipped in dealing with bullying issues.

‘… children come up with a better way of doing things …’

Their role is to help other children in the school who feel that they are being bullied or are having friendship problems. It is a credit to them that the ABC always handles such issues with maturity and respect.
Every child at Bar Hill is given the power to change a situation in which they may be unhappy. They do this by contacting our Anti-Bullying Council.

As a group we try to encourage the ‘no blame’ policy where the labels ‘victim’ and ‘bully’ are used rarely. This means that the council are able to listen to all concerned without passing judgement.

To create a successful resolution, all the children involved try to come up with a way of making things better for all concerned. The ABC then help the children having problems to make promises to each other and a ‘Contract’ is drawn up. If the contract is broken by any of the children the Head Teacher is involved. It is a credit to our school that our head has never been asked to intervene.
Last year the council was assisted by the Samaritans, who helped us with our listening skills and ideas to help other children in the school who might be unhappy. Most recently we attended a conference bringing secondary and primary schools together to share and learn from the experience of other schools. We were also invited to present at two Anti-Bullying Dissemination days for the Local Authority.

Looking forward we hope to expand the work of our ABC in our own school, during Anti-Bullying week, which is a national event in November.
We hope to create a positive atmosphere where children do not feel afraid to step forward and talk about what is happening to them. Where children are empowered to stand up for themselves.