Bullying in schools

[chogger]

Hi all

We are looking into Moving from the UK to Auckland . I have been researching about schools and seem to come across lots of stories about bullying at school being quite common.

We have two young children that are quite shy!! so was looking for some first hand information/experiences on this subject?

Thank you
Christine

[JandM]

You've come across a lot of bullying stories - may I ask where? If it's in the press, remember what makes the headlines, because it's the bad news every time, over something like '400 children work together to turn waste ground into a garden'. I would suggest taking note of which particular school any bad story is about, then doing a Google search specifically for good news items concerning that school - e.g. charity work, exam results, school outings - and also the school's own website, to check pupil numbers, to try to get an idea of the true balance.

Whereabouts in Auckland are you thinking of settling? People in the area already may be able to give first hand experience of particular schools.

[dharder]

We haven’t had any serious issues here, nor did we in the UK. I haven't really noticed there to be much more than in the UK, to be honest, neither in the news nor in real life.

What I have occasionally found here is less willingness of the schools to address it, and a total overuse of the term ‘bullying’ by parents. So parents show up at school complaining about all sorts of issues as ‘bullying’, and the school often not doing anything about any of them, not even the ones that would actually qualify as bullying. The school my children attend actually published a working definition of what bullying is in one of their newsletter. These are just me personal observations, and largely anecdotal, of course.

Personally, I want a school to be aware of what it is, to accept that it happens even at their super friendly special school, and have policies and programmes in place to deal with it. I don’t want to hear ‘we don’t have it at our school’, because I would think that is simply not true.

Daniela

[chogger]

Hi Thank you thats reassuring for me .

I read several stories on other forums about bullying in the schools and parents moving their children to different schools due to this.

Christine

[chogger]

Thank you thats a great way to check out the schools!!!!

Moving so far is although exciting also scary , my children being happy is my main concern so reading the stories made me feel uneasy thats why i thought it best to ask first hand.

We are just in the first stages of looking at Auckland so not sure which area/suburb we will move to looking at probably west (glen eden) maybe but to be honest we have no clue. Need to research more which areas are suitable and affordable.

Any suggestions welcome.

Christine

[JandM]

I think you're bound to have your children's happiness in mind. It's only natural. About the forum posts you've seen, once again, don't forget that it's people who are fired up about something that has gone wrong who are likely to take the trouble to write about the school. We don't expect to read, 'The children did lessons in school all day, and played outside, and nobody fell down and hurt himself, then they came home and told me all about it,' even if it's true, because it's not 'a story', and yet it's possible that every member of the forum with children COULD have reported that at the end of every day this week.

By the way, I have two grandchildren very happily at school in Auckland. There has been the odd moment down the years, but it's been dealt with.