Move to address bullying in schools given approval

Government’s stated plans to address the matter of bullying in schools as part of its education reform efforts, has been given a nod of approval by a local charity already working with at-risk students, to eliminate this bad practice.

Shawn Clarke, CEO of Supreme Counselling for Personal Development (SCPD) has publicly placed on record his pleasure at hearing that Government will be seeking to expand the number of programmes designed to eliminate bullying in the school system, as announced by Governor General of Barbados, Her Excellency Dame Sandra Mason on Tuesday, as she delivered the Throne Speech, as the Parliament of Barbados opened a second session under the leadership of the Barbados Labour Party administration, currently headed by Prime Minister Mia Amor Mottley.

“I want to offer a level of support, as well as to say how happy I am to hear the Governor General note in the Throne Speech, that the Prime Minister is now giving very serious thought to having a bullying prevention programme within the schools, to govern bullying. This is something obviously that Supreme Counselling and Shawn Clarke as a certified bullying prevention trainer and consultant has been asking for as you know, for a number of years. And quite recently we have intensified our cry to have such a programme in the schools,” the CEO of Supreme Counselling commented.

“So I just want to express how happy I am to see that the government of Barbados is heading in that direction, to address bullying in a much more serious and systematic way within our schools and obviously to ask that serious

consideration be given to the Olweus Bullying Prevention Programme,” Clarke said.

“I also want to express how happy I am as well to hear mentioned in that same speech, of the fact that government is looking to work more seriously with the third sector, to address and to remedy some of the societal ills, both in schools and in the wider society. I think we are now moving in the right direction,” he added.

The Olweus Bullying Prevention Programme which is used across the globe, was started by Dr. Dan Olweus from Norway. It is a comprehensive approach designed to reduce and prevent bullying problems among school aged children and to improve peer relations. The programme was introduced into Barbados a few years ago by Supreme Counselling and has a good record in the limited number of schools in which it presently operates.

“It is a good programme, in that it looks at the whole school or community approach. It is not just concentrating on the person exhibiting the bullying behaviour; it does not just look at the target of the bullying, but it takes into consideration bystanders as well. It operates on four main components. It looks at the individual component, where you work with the parties involved exhibiting the bullying behaviour. It looks at the classroom approach, where the entire classroom would be involved in the whole aspect of bullying prevention, whether through class meetings and other interventions happening within the class. It also incorporates a whole school approach, where the whole school gets involved in bullying prevention in-school campaigns, and then we have the community component, where we try to get the wider community involved in preventing bullying,” Clarke explained of the international programme, which has been specifically tweaked for Barbados.

To date, Clarke has also established an Olweus Bullying Prevention Programme in Antigua and Barbuda, training a number of teachers and community practitioners there in bullying prevention and he is hoping now to expand this programme in Barbados.