Almost one in four school pupils admitted taking part in cyber-bullying

Alec Doyle, local democracy reporter

Almost a quarter of Wrexham school pupils have admitted taking part in cyber-bullying according to new data.

The latest pupil wellbeing data from the School Health Research Network (SHRN) shows Wrexham to be slightly above the national average with 22% of pupils admitting to taking part in cyber-bullying – a 4% increase on 2022.

A delegation of pupils from Ysgol Y Grango have told the council that while bullying has aways been an issue in schools, the online nature of means there is little respite and teachers need more powers to help deal with it.

Wrexham County Borough Council’s Lifelong Learning Committee invited school council members from Ysgol Y Grango and the chair and vice chair of the Senedd Ir Ifanc – Wrexham’s own youth parliament – to offer their perspective on an issue that affect pupils in every school across the borough.

Year seven pupils Ella Branthwaite, Skyla Austin and Thalissa Silveiro, year eight pupil Deakon Watson and Ava Arguelada-Gibson from year nine at Ysgol Y Grango attended the meeting.

More powers

Asked about bullying in general, they told councillors that schools need to engage with pupils more and asked that teachers be given more powers to tackle the issue.

“In primary school for example, when there was an issue around online bullying, we would take the evidence to the headteacher and there would be a real impact and consequence,” they said.

“In secondary school there is less impact on pupils. Teachers also cannot deal with bullying that takes place outside of school. But with bullying now able to start in school and continue outside, we think they should be able to support pupils who bring issues to their attention wherever they took place.”

The pupils highlighted that where children are bullied today, unlike previous generations it no longer ends once they get home.

“Things spread so fast now,” the pupils told the councillors. “One post spreads to another and it makes it easy to bully someone using social media.

“What happens during the day can continue online in the evening. It’s really bad.

“Posts may also be deleted but years later they could resurface, having a fresh impact on the victim. Sometimes even the original poster may be unaware that someone else saved it and has reposted it.”

‘Violated’

They also acknowledged that pupils are not the only victims of cyber-bullying.

“I’m a teacher – not in Wrexham County Borough – and I had a video posted of me online about 10 years ago with nasty comments and I felt violated,” said Cllr Robert Ian Williams.

“Fortunately the teachers union I was a member of had it taken down quickly but that lives with me to this day.”

It was a practice the students were familiar with.

“We’ve seen teachers being filmed and nasty comments posted on social media,” they said. “It has not only a serious impact on those teachers but also the pupils. It also give younger pupils the idea that that behaviour is OK.

“There needs to be more education at a younger age around the consequences of posting bullying content so that young people truly understand the impact of what they are doing.”

Potential solutions suggested by councillors were to have a policy where phones were locked away at the start of class or not permitted at all.

The pupils agreed such policies would help, but were concerned about the impact on education for some.

“Having a policy to lock phones away at the start of lessons could help concentration in class and prevent cyber-bullying of pupils and teachers in the classroom,” they told councillors.

“But some pupils use their phones to take pictures of work on the whiteboard to take home and revise because they cannot get all the information down in class time. For those pupils it would be a disadvantage.

“We think that schools need more powers to support pupils so they can deal with problems as a whole, not just the parts that take place at school.

Committed

Karen Evans, Chief Officer for Education and Early Years Intervention, said that schools were committed to support pupils within the educational environment.

“Our schools are working very hard to support pupils the best way they can,” she said. “But there has to be an appreciation that there’s only so much education can do in terms of the role and responsibility of educators.

“This is not an education issue in isolation, this is a social issue. What is fundamental to this discussion is that there are no checks and balances on social media platforms.

“There is a culture that encourages people to post what they want and respond with very negative comments.

“I want to give you reassurance that schools are working hard to within the context of supporting children’s wellbeing within the education community

“It would be good to gather views from across Wrexham on responsible phone use in schools to see how we could improve things for pupils and that’s something we would like to discuss with the Senedd Ir Ifanc.”