We’re reaching the end of anti-bullying week (although, of course, every week should be an anti-bullying week!).
At Moortown, there is very limited bullying – in fact, children frequently tell us there is none at all, which is great. Even so, it’s still important to prepare your child if they encounter bullying. Please discuss at home how harmful bullying can be, and encourage them to start telling other people.
A report by the NSPCC describes the nature of bullying experienced by young people contacting Childline. Its key findings are:
- Bullying is the second most common reason for boys and the third most common reason for girls to contact Childline. It makes up 9% of all counselling sessions (25,740 sessions in 2015/16).
- In a quarter of counselling sessions about bullying, children also talked about mental health and wellbeing issues.
- Last year, Childline provided more counselling sessions about physical bullying (4,723 sessions) than online bullying (4,541 sessions).
- However, there has been an 88% increase in counselling about online bullying over the past five years.
- In 2015/16, there were 1,420 counselling sessions with young people talking about bullying on social networking and gaming sites, up 34% on the previous year.
- Of the children who contacted Childline about bullying, 12% said they had not told anyone else about it.
- The young people who had told someone else were most likely to have told a parent (31%), a teacher (30%) or a friend (16%).
- Childline delivered over 300,000 in-depth counselling sessions to children and young people in 2015/16.
- Overall, Childline provides more counselling sessions to girls than to boys.
- Although Childline provide more counselling sessions about bullying to girls, it is a more common concern among the boys who do contact them.
- Due to the confidential nature of the Childline service, young people do not always disclose personal information, such as their age and gender.