What is Bullying?

“Bullying is something that can hurt you on the inside or on the outside. It hurts you on the outside by hitting you and hurting you physically. It hurts you on the inside by name calling, or hurting your feelings.

“Bullying is done on purpose, it’s not an accident. If someone hurts you during a game by accident that is not bullying, but if every time you played a game they hurt you, or your feelings that would be bullying. It can aim to hurt a group of people or just one person and can be done by a group or just one person.

“Bullying happens more than once. The bully/bullies do it over and over and over again and they can take away your self esteem and confidence.” – Bully Busters, 2017.

We have a zero-tolerance attitude to bullying at our school. Our ultimate aim is:

• • To embed our shared vision and a create a school environment where all members of the school and the community feel safe and secure.
  • To make it clear that all forms of bullying are unacceptable at our school.
  • To encourage and support pupils to report incidents of bullying, including cyber bullying.
  • If an incident of bullying does arise it is dealt with as quickly and as effectively as possible, taking into consideration the needs of all parties and of our community, and, as a result, reduce the incidents of bullying.
  • To support and protect victims of bullying and ensure they are listened to.
  • To help and support children/young people displaying bullying behaviour to change their attitudes and understand why it needs to change.
  • To liaise with parents and other appropriate members of our community.
  • To ensure all members of our community feel responsible for helping to reduce bullying.

You can view our Anti-Bullying Policy on our Policies page.

What is E-Safety?

Often referred to as ‘internet safety’, ‘online safety’ or ‘web safety’, E-safety is defined as the safe and responsible use of technology. This includes the use of the internet and also other means of communication using electronic media (eg text messages, gaming devices, email etc).

In practice, e-safety is as much about behaviour as it is electronic security. E-safety in this context is classified into three areas of risk:

• Content: being exposed to illegal, inappropriate or harmful material;
• Contact: being subjected to harmful online interaction with other users;
• Conduct: personal online behaviour that increases the likelihood of, or causes, harm.

As a school we have a duty to protect and educate pupils and staff in their use of technology and have the appropriate mechanisms in place to intervene and support any incident where appropriate (Ofsted 2017). We teach pupils about e-safety at every opportunity through their computing lessons, but appreciate that outside of school hours, children can be given unsupervised access to the internet which might leave them vulnerable to harmful material.

To support parents with maintaining safe online practices, please see our helpful tips and resources below. If you need more help with e-safety, or if you wish to report a problem, please visit the Child Exploitation and Online Protection (CEOP) command website.