18 MARCH 2009
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Behaviour Summit Overlooks Bullying

The Behaviour Summit held in Wellington on 16-17 March needed to focus more on bullying and intolerance. Instead the agenda was dominated by what to do with students with behaviour disorders

Expert presentations at the Summit focussed on interventions aimed at the 5% of students with severe behaviour problems and the challenges they pose to teachers and to themselves. However, a major international report released in December last year ranked New Zealand second worst among 37 countries for bullying in primary schools with rates more than 50 percent above the international average.

Nathan Brown, from the New Zealand AIDS Foundation (NZAF) and Programme Leader of OUT THERE! a queer youth development project, was a participant at the Summit. Brown says "the Summit's organisers seemed to medicalise the causes of bullying by blurring behaviour disorders and bullying together. If they had allowed young people on the receiving end of bullying, such as students who are perceived to be gay or lesbian, to participate in the Summit there might have been more discussion about how to actually make schools safer for them."

A report from the Office of the Children's Commissioner that was presented at the Summit proposed that whole-school approaches be used which aim to support positive behaviour by changing the school culture. OUT THERE! promotes this as the best means of addressing homophobia and transphobia in schools.

"Support of a whole-school approach is excellent but I was disappointed that there were no ideas about how schools could develop student's understanding and appreciation of diversity as called for in the Curriculum. If a whole-school approach is to be successful then a central aspect must be to encourage all students to accept and value diversity and difference" says Brown.

Examples of initiatives promoted by OUT THERE! that can form part of a whole-school approach to reduce homophobic bullying include staff diversity awareness training, school processes that help identify homophobia in the school rather than ignore it, a student diversity group to organise school wide campaigns and a comprehensive health programme that covers sexuality and gender diversity. Pink Shirt Day, an international day of action against bullying was actively supported by OUT THERE! recently as an anti-bullying initiative that schools and students can support to send a clear message to students to think again before bullying a peer.

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