Yesterday a teenage boy was convicted of racial harassment for the serious and systematic bullying of another young person. Emma-Jane Cross, CEO of Beatbullying, a UK charity, said a ‘critical and long overdue precedent has been set by this conviction’.
Beatbullying is one of the charities with which NPC is piloting its charity well-being questionnaire, the interim results of which are recently published in the report Feelings Count. Bullying is a serious issue in schools, is closely linked to low-self esteem and can result in children missing school and getting poor exam results.
Beatbullying works with victims and perpetrators in schools to tackle bullying. Until now they have used feedback forms to evaluate whether incidents of bullying have decreased, but have found it hard to put a number on the less tangible outcomes of their work like improving self-esteem or friendships.
We now have the data back from about 100 children in four schools where Beatbullying has worked, and it is being inputted. I am hoping that the results will be really useful to Beatbullying and other campaigners.
The baseline could show the full impact of bullying on different areas of well-being like self-esteem and emotional well-being, providing further evidence of how serious an issues this is. The follow-up questionnaire could prove how Beatbullying has helped these children, by building resilience or improving relationships, providing a case for further funding. It may also show who Beatbullying is working best with, who it is working less well with, and help it to adapt and improve its services.
I read with interest your work about bullying. We are an educational charity working with young people who have dropped out of the school system, mainly due to bullying.
We re-engage them in learning by empowering them to be in charge of their own learning in a supportive environment. We have a 100% success rate of getting students back into education. If you are interested please let me know.
Regards
Alison Mcdonagh