PARLIAMENTARY WRITTEN QUESTION
Pupils: Bullying (22 January 2015)

The Government believes that schools are best placed to decide how to prevent and tackle bullying based on their particular circumstances. There is no legal requirement on schools to record incidents of bullying but school staff should develop a consistent and effective approach to monitoring bullying incidents. For some schools, that will mean recording incidents while others prefer to take a different approach, such as surveying their pupils anonymously to identify trends in bullying and how safe young people feel at school. Schools are held to account on their approach to bullying by Ofsted.

Research results from the national Longitudinal Study of Young people (LSYPE), which is funded by the Department for Education, found that bullying among year 9 pupils has fallen in the period from 2004 to 2013. 30,000 fewer pupils said they had been bullied in the last twelve months. This is a reduction from 45 per cent of pupils to 40 per cent.