Prejudiced based bullying
In its 2012 report ‘No Place for Bullying’ Ofsted identified that, while teaching and support staff have receive high quality generic anti-bullying training, staff were neither well trained nor confident to respond to the different forms of bullying, including prejudice based bullying.
What is prejudice based bullying?
Prejudice based bullying is repeated hurtful behaviour that exploits or abuses someone based on their actual or supposed membership of a vulnerable group or their support for such a group. The following protected characteristics identified in the Equality Act 2010 are particularly relevant in this context: age, disability, gender/sex, gender identity, race/ethnicity, religion and sexuality. These dimensions have legal protection because they expose individuals to particular vulnerabilities within our society and within our schools.
Prejudice focuses on the difference between ‘us’ and ‘the other’. Any context where one person uses hurtful behaviour or language that communicates their superiority over someone else is likely to involve prejudice. Young children know the hurtfulness of words like ‘stupid’ and ‘thick’. Their power is based on a prejudice within our society that it is better to intelligent than not to be. The belief that clever people are better in some way than people who are not clever gives particular power to the words. A child who uses this language to be hurtful but does not understand that it is a prejudice is not excused; but rather needs to be taught that it is hurtful, it is prejudice and it is unacceptable.
What is a prejudice based incident?
Schools are increasingly and correctly concerned to prevent any escalation of hurtful or unkind behaviour to the point where it becomes bullying. Individual incidents that reflect attitudes that suggest that one group is superior to another are prejudice based incidents.
Schools are experienced in using the following definition for recording and responding to racist incidents: “any incident which is perceived to be racist by the victim or any other person”. The Police have for some years used this approach more broadly to apply across all areas of Hate Crime. Under the requirements of the Equality Act 2010 it is important that schools provide consistency in their response to the protected characteristics.
It is particularly helpful to broaden the definition already well established so that a prejudiced related incident is "any incident which is perceived to be prejudice by the victim or any other person". This definition is not a conclusion of what will come from any investigation, but it will ensure that such dimensions are properly recorded, investigated and responded to. Staff will need training to understand how to apply such a definition in practice and what it requires of them as professionals in recognising the different forms of prejudice.
Hate crime
It is really important that schools recognise that incidents that they are recording as ‘Prejudice related incidents’ are called ‘Hate Crime’ by the Police. The definition for Hate Crime reporting is:
Any criminal offence or incident which is perceived by the victim, or any other person, to be motivated by hostility or prejudice towards someone based on a personal characteristic.
This common definition was agreed in 2007 by the Association of Chief Police Officers (now the National Police Chiefs’ Council), Crown Prosecution Service, Prison Service (now the National Offender Management Service) and other organisations that make up the criminal justice system.
Some of the incidents being recorded in schools as prejudice related incidents, when investigated, are found to be unintentional and demonstrate a clear need for support and education. This evidences the importance of a preventative curriculum that teaches children and young people real understanding and appreciation of the positive value of diversity, through approaches that have anti-prejudice at its heart.
Pupils who have been engaged in activity that involves prejudice must be made aware that their behaviour could lead to criminal processes. Schools should inform targets of prejudice (or their parents) of their right to report their experience and to signpost them appropriately. Schools may wish to make a third party report themselves. This report provides further information.
Teaching resources
Hate Crime teaching resources have been produced by the Wellbeing Team at HfL have produced Hate Crime teaching resources at the request of the Hertfordshire County Community Safety Unit to support schools in recognising and addressing Hate Crime.
Hate Crime teaching resource
There are three short units of lessons suitable for pupils in: Year 5 and Year 6, Year 7 and Year 8 and Year 9 and Year 10. It has been produced on behalf of Hertfordshire County Community Safety Unit (CCSU) who wish to support schools in this area.
It is an ideal resource to be delivered in PSHE/RSHE lessons and could be used in consecutive lessons prior to or during National Hate Crime Awareness Week in autumn 2022.
The resource addresses the following topics:
- identity
- inclusion and exclusion
- belonging
- acceptance of difference
- supporting and valuing others
- hate crime
- hate incidents
- the law and hate crime
- reporting hate crime
- understanding and empathy
KS2 Unit includes activities and resources on:
- Something Else by Kathryn Cave and Chris Riddell
- YouTube’s Jake’s Story
- Bing video’s ‘The Invisible Boy’ by Trudy Ludwig
KS3 and 4 Units includes activities and resources on:
- The Undefeated by Kwame Alexander
- Stephen Lawrence Day
- Jack Petchey Speak Out Challenge’s A Manifesto on the Future of Education by Zayne Adeshokan
- Johnny Delaney’s story
Hate Crime Awareness Week 2021 teacher resource
The resource below provides age-appropriate activities for KS2 pupils (Years 5 & 6) as well as KS3 and 4 students. These activities have also been linked to the RSHE curriculum. The resource addresses the following topics by helping young people to explore:
- hate crime
- hate incidents
- the law and hate crime
- reporting hate crime
- understanding and empathy
Developing a prevention strategy
Important steps in a prevention strategy will be:
- responding to any and all derogatory language
- recording any and all derogatory language to inform monitoring of trends
- a taught curriculum that expands young people’s understanding of and value for diversity, including
- embedded representation of diverse groups across the curriculum
- teaching about and against prejudice
- identifying and challenging stereotypes
- broadening the range of what is deemed ‘normal’
- development of young people’s capacity for empathy
It is helpful to note that some language is inherently and always hurtful. Responding to such language is straightforward. Other words are perfectly acceptable if used positively and correctly, e.g. black, lesbian, gay, transsexual, woman and girl. Misuse of these words to be negative is always unacceptable and young people need to learn that this is prejudice. Words that individuals choose to describe their identity should be respected and never used to be negative or hurtful.
Individuals with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities are in the group that is most vulnerable to prejudice based hurtful behaviour and bullying across their whole lifetime. Unlike other groups, their vulnerability does not reduce with age. It is therefore very important to ensure that:
- individuals with learning difficulties and disabilities are taught strategies to protect themselves and remain resilient as part of a life strategy
- the school curriculum is inclusive and represents people of diverse abilities, and those with physical and mental conditions as part of the natural diversity of our society. Pupils benefit from understanding the needs and difficulties of others. Aspects covered might include those with ADHD, Down’s syndrome, cancer, physical disfigurement, autism, aspergers and tourettes
Stonewall data (The School Report 2012) demonstrates the vulnerability of lesbian, gay and bisexual (LGB) young people.
- homophobic bullying continues to be widespread in Britain’s schools. More than half (55%) of lesbian, gay and bisexual pupils have experienced direct bullying
- the use of homophobia language is endemic. Almost all (99%) gay young people hear phrases like ‘that’s so gay’ or ‘you’re so gay’ in school and 96% of gay pupils hear homophobic language such as ‘poof’ or ‘lezza’
- only half of gay pupils who experience homophobic bullying report that their schools say homophobic bullying is wrong and three in five say that teachers who witness the bullying never intervene
Such experiences lead young people who are LGB to change their future educational plans and to have increased their risk of suicide, self-harm and depression.
It is important to remember that anyone can be called ‘gay’, ‘lezza’ or one of the other myriad insults based on sexual orientation that young people are currently prone to using. Data from Hertfordshire’s schools in 2011 showed that 40% of junior aged and 85% of secondary aged pupils had themselves used ‘gay’ either to be hurtful or to say that something is rubbish.
Studies show that pupils are less likely to report both homophobic and sexualised bullying. This is partly about embarrassment and with homophobia partly about the fear of either being assumed to be or being ‘outed’ as LGB. Responses to incidents should emphasise that all homophobia is unacceptable and that there is nothing wrong with being lesbian, gay or bisexual. It is also vital to challenge the assumption that everyone is heterosexual unless otherwise stated and to establish a broader range of normal diversity.
A primary curriculum to prevent homophobia and promote LGB equality will include representation of different kinds of families during PSHE and Circle time sessions and in texts and resources across the curriculum (including families with same sex parents, other LGB family members and children who do not fit gender stereotypes).
Individuals who experience gender dysphoria – discomfort with their gender – find it very difficult to explore and express who they want to be. Hurtful use of language like ‘trannie’ is increasingly heard among young people.
The stereotyping of expectations of boys and girls and men and women feeds into the prejudice against transgender people. It is not new, it is pervasive and it is strongly reinforced by the toy industry, the music industry, celebrity culture and the media.
The ridiculing of boys who show any interest in what are seen as stereotypical girl activities, and vice versa, feeds this prejudice. It is important that schools intervene to broaden young people’s understanding of gender identity, presenting it not as a binary but as a continuum.
Gender equality has been the focus of schools’ planning for many years and yet stereotypical assumptions about the interests and talents of boys and girls remain hard to move and double standards about expectations of boys’ and girls’ behaviour continue to be pervasive.
There is no evidence to show that hurtful sexualised language about girls, e.g. slag, slut and ‘ho’, is decreasing. It is now sometimes presented as a norm in films, television programmes and in some forms of pop music. This gender prejudice is also very commonly perpetrated by girls themselves as well as by boys. The ridiculing of boys through gender and sexuality based name-calling is also commonplace.
It is essential that schools address and prevent these forms of abuse as a key part of their PSHE, SRE and anti-bullying curriculum. Sexist attitudes feeds into the perpetration of sexualised bullying and exploitative teenage relationships and should therefore be strongly and consistently challenged.
There are many expressions of racial and religious prejudice ranging from a negative focus on physical differences through to disparagement of heritage and ethnicity and ridicule and hatred based on different culture and belief systems. Stereotyping of ethnic and religious groups supports racism and should always be challenged.
The following are examples of particular forms of racial and religious prejudice and the list is not exhaustive:
Anti-refugee prejudice – The role of schools in supporting children whose families are seeking asylum or who are refugees is rendered more difficult by the negative coverage of these issues in sections of the media and by the refrain that all such people are a threat or are scroungers.
Anti-semitism – Europe’s oldest hatred continues to be influential and can be exacerbated by events elsewhere in the world.
Anti-traveller prejudice – Such prejudice continues to be ‘respectable’ in many quarters and it is not assisted by media representations that focus on representing cultural difference rather than similarity and focus on presenting the ‘bizarre’.
Islamophobia – Anti-Muslim prejudice is strongly driven by misrepresentations of Islam as undifferentiated, static and intolerant. The mistaken assumption that all Muslims are extremists is not uncommon among young people.
The curriculum can challenge racism and religious prejudice by presenting the diversity of all ethnic and religious groups, emphasising cultural similarities and teaching respect for difference. An understanding both human rights and citizen’s responsibilities underpins this agenda.
Church of England guidance to faith schools
Church of England: Guidance for schools on challenging homophobic, biphobic and transphobic bullying (pdf)