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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 10 Hansard (5 September) . . Page.. 3128 ..

MR STEFANIAK (continuing):

At pages 20 and 21 of the report there is a very good example of an anti-bullying program run by Richardson Primary School. It won the 1994 Violence Prevention Award. The program there involved student identification of bullying, recording by teachers of bullying incidents either observed or reported, and regular monitoring and reporting to students of the incidence of bullying and an agreed set of consequences. One of its reported strengths is enabling the issue of bullying to become public. I quote from the report:

As the school stated:

Children are free to tell staff that they "don't feel safe" and seek help. Parents can ring the school to report events knowing that the school will take their concerns seriously and take steps to remedy the situation.

The reported outcomes of the Richardson Primary School program include:

. a significant reduction in bullying;

. a safer playground environment for all children;

. almost total elimination of reports on racist comments;

. the development of more positive ways of solving problems among students who were frequently displaying bullying behaviour; and

. the development of an understanding of what constitutes bullying behaviour.

The committee indicated at page 21 that it hopes more schools will acknowledge the need to address bullying. Indeed, the Richardson model is something which I think a lot of schools could really take note of. It has been shown to be very effective without a number of the steps which Ms Tucker has suggested we would need to take over and above what we are doing at present.

Mr Speaker, a couple of points are also mentioned in conjunction with that. One is the buddy system, with older students looking after younger students in the playground. That is a very effective system. In a way, it is not terribly dissimilar to the old prefect system which used to exist in high schools. Older, more mature students had the responsibility of ensuring that younger students were not bullied or intimidated.

There are a couple of things which I would like to highlight and about which I think more guidance could have been given to the Government. Indeed, we are doing things which will help. The problem of unwelcome visitors is a very real one. In my travels around the schools I find that in some schools there is a very real problem these days with unwelcome visitors. In some high schools especially there is a lot of discussion as to the principal's power to remove unwelcome school visitors. Some schools reported serious problems, such as drug dealing and fights with visitors to the school grounds.

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