Interfaz

BULLYING

First, we will look at violence between pupils in France, and we will then examine the support strategies available to schools and teachers.

The legislation in this domain has been listed in appendix 2. 1 – BULLYING IN FRENCH SCHOOLS

The phenomenon of urban violence is widely covered by the media, in so far as it affects the general public above all, who fear for their safety. School violence is presented in the context of disadvantaged areas populated by young people from the poor French suburbs, mainly from immigrant and deprived backgrounds. While we may accuse journalists of depicting certain neighbourhoods only in a negative way, neglecting the positive aspects of solidarity and cultural expression for example, we cannot deny that what they describe corresponds to the reality. In effect, as we saw in the report by the two Chief Inspectors of Schools (Armand, Gille, 2006, p. 13), the map of areas concerned by school violence may be drawn up according to ZEPs (Education Action Zones), socio-economically disadvantaged areas in which the “2868 structures (2357 primary schools, 511 secondary schools (including) 365 collèges, 81 lycées, 65 LP, lycées professionnels), located in ten Regional Education Authorities (Aix-Marseille, Amiens, Créteil, Lille, Lyon, Montpellier, Rouen, Strasbourg, Toulouse et Versailles) (which) are involved in the scheme to combat violence.”

Since 2001, the French centralized civil service has generated a computerised statistical process for the State to record violent incidents using a software package called Signa. Every school must indicate all the serious violent incidents it experiences using this software program. Thus, the DEPP, the Ministerial assessment, forecasting and performance department, analyses all notifications of serious incidents that the heads of schools are obliged to send to the Ministry of Education. For such acts to be taken into consideration by Signa, the violence must meet the three following criteria: be clearly criminal in nature, have been notified, and have a major impact on the school community. Uncivil behaviour is not taken into account by the software.

Using this form of calculation, the DEPP report, published on 28 December 2006 included 82,000 declarations of serious incidents reported by the heads of institutions or educational advisors for the year 2005-2006.

“The average number of reports of acts of violence by school institutions has remained more or less stable, but there has been a 7% increase in priority education institutions.

Physical violence without a weapon and insults or serious threats remain the most frequent incidents, making up 55% of all the incidents reported.

During an academic year marked by violence in the poor suburbs and demonstrations against the introduction of a new first job contract policy (CPE : contrat première embauche), damage to property or threats to security are the incidents that have increased the most.” (Rollot, 2007).

The ministry developed a reliable resource for collecting data about violence in schools. However, this tool has certain weaknesses. We highlight two in our research.

The first is that “It is a ministry’s tool for the ministry,” as it itself recognised, meaning that there is no feedback to the school heads. They are thus deprived of a precious source of information about the situation in their own school compared to that in others. And yet the system is costly both in terms of time and work for their staff. Following a report on the most violent schools by the weekly magazine, Le Point, on 31 August 2006, the SNPDEN (Syndicat national des personnels de direction de l’Education nationale : National trade union of national education managers) called on school heads to boycott the tool the following academic year. The minister announced that Signa would be reformed and that the new software “would enable school heads to monitor the evolution of violence in their school and the range of actions set up to avert it. In addition, to facilitate the data collection and the use of the statistics, the nomenclature of incidents reported would be simplified and the definition of incidents would fit into such or such a clarified category.” (Rollot, 2007).

The second drawback is that the Signa system can only take into account serious and reported incidents. Yet many incidents do not meet these criteria, and it’s the accumulation of lesser uncivil behaviour, that goes unnoticed or unreported by the school staff that ends up making a person a victim who suffers, while early intervention could have stopped the process. This is the position taken by Debarbieux which appeared in his report at the European Council conference of December 2002 Violence in schools - a challenge for the local community (Council of Europe, 2004) concluded a major integrated three-year programme (2002-2004), “Responses to violence in everyday life in a democratic society.”

The figures collected by Signa are lower than in a qualitative study where pupils are questioned directly, possibly because of the wary or disheartened silence of the victim

and the tendency not to take the child victim seriously, as if violence was a form of socialisation that adults continue to consider normal for young people.

Furthermore, comparing violence at school through a quantitative study may be meaningless. Indeed, there may be fewer victims and more violence when the victims are more violently and more often victimised. What the European and North American studies show clearly is the importance of repetition. Much violence and criminality is built on small and continuous acts (Blaya & Debarbieux, 2000).

Bullying not only has a psychological impact on victims, but also a sociological impact as individuals desert the public space and the number of aggressions subsequently increases. This is a well-known phenomenon of incivility.

Cécile Carra (2006) conducted a quantitative study with a qualitative study, including a “study of self-reported violence,” in other words, taking into account not only what the victims said but also the aggressors’ side of the story. She collated the data from 2000 pupil questionnaires and around 100 teachers’ questionnaires in 31 primary schools in the Nord department of France. Unlike the Signa data, which indicated that violence in primary schools is rare, the pupils’ statements in this study demonstrate that it already exists between pupils in a form that is “massively physical, including punching and fighting in the playground»”, and that it is “massively suffered.” In effect, almost half the pupils questioned (41.3%) declared they had been victims of physical violence at least once, and a third reported they had inflicted violence at least once on others. The doctoral thesis by YoonJung Cho (2008) about bullying between school children reinforces this viewpoint (Asdih, Cho, 2005; Zay, Cho, 2007; Cho, 2008). Her principal and most significant method was a survey by questionnaire addressed to first grade pupils in 10 secondary schools in 3 countries. The children were aged 11-12 year old for the English and French pupils and 12-13 year old for the South Korean pupils. She collected 1229 answers to the questionnaire (France : 321) completed by interviews with school staff, teachers and others.

She confirms that violence between pupils is frequent, although it is often in a form that is not easily discerned by adults, and that the victims are more likely to suffer from repeated small incidents than from one major violent incident.

This lack of visibility of violence between pupils and the inadequacy of school practices in dealing with those who are the most visible because they are the most disruptive, was highlighted by the coordinators of the second world conference on violence in schools

organised in May 2003 by the European Observatory of school violence, in partnership with the Education Faculty at Laval university (Québec).

“Not all forms of violence are spectacular and some types of aggression are more insidious like bullying, intimidation, and mistreatment between peers, which can be a source of insecurity and have a dramatic impact on the victim’s future. These forms of micro violence may degenerate and lead to manifestations of extreme violence if they are not dealt with by the adult community within the school. Some school administrations adopt a policy of zero tolerance and stigmatisation of individuals considered as potentially dangerous, without necessarily providing real solutions in terms of prevention and management of crisis situations apart from suspension from school, which can in turn lead to social exclusion. There appears to be an increasingly urgent need to exchange know-how and current practice, both by teachers, management teams and researchers.” (Blaya, Beaumont, 2004, p. 6).

2 – ANTI-BULLYING STRATEGIES: PREVENTING, REMEDYING OR