Bullying – protect our children or encourage them to make a stand?

Peter Tait, head of Sherborne Preparatory School, claims that pupils are being left vulnerable to bullying because of “excessive closeting”. He has urged schools to do more to “bully-proof” children and equip them with the tools they need to avoid being targeted in the first place.

Writing in Attain, Mr Tait said that schools must do all they can to foster an anti-bullying culture, but also argued that giving young people the resilience to cope on their own is just as important to help prevent them from being targeted repeatedly.

Bullying is a serious issue and can blight the lives of young people to the extent that they are unable to function normally; too many teenagers take their own lives as a result of bullying, and statistics suggest that almost half of young people say they have been bullied at school at some point in their lives.