Effective Monitoring and Reporting is Key to Tackling Bullying in Schools, Advises Education Special

Fast-growing national anti-bullying initiative demonstrates the success of real-time incident reporting and attitude surveys in helping to eradicate all forms of bullying

[ClickPress, Fri Mar 30 2007] More effective monitoring and recording of bullying is the key to tackling and reducing this issue in schools, according to leading educational software specialist Vantage Technologies.

This comment follows the publication of the Commons Education & Skills Select Committee report on Bullying in schools and calls for a national enquiry into the scale of bullying in schools. and how all forms of bullying are being recorded and detailed.

The Education Select Committee report states that a lack of reliable data is proving to be a barrier to effective anti-bullying work and recommends that “all local authorities, in partnership with schools, should develop a robust system for collation, evaluation and reporting of bullying for the purpose of effectively improving the tackling and management of this issue in all schools across their area”.

Vantage Technologies has developed a national anti-bullying initiative which is now used by 40 local authorities across England. The initiative uses Sentinel, a web-based system, which enables staff and pupils to report instances of bullying securely and confidentially over the Internet and provides the case management tools to investigate and resolve such incidents.

This web-based approach collates statistical information into a single reporting database, which also allows teachers, school management and Children’s Services professionals to share resources and adopt a more coordinated approach to the identification of patterns, tends and hotspots.

Sentinel’s incident management capability is supported by an on-line survey module that allows the local authority to measure the attitude and experience of young people and parents towards bullying, hate crime and their personal safety across all its schools and communities.

Martyn Goodhand, chief executive of Vantage Technologies said: “Better research and reporting provides a clearer understanding of the issues, around inclusion, equality and bullying in our schools. Information and understanding allows more effective and earlier intervention and a far better utilisation of scarce, professional resources within schools and Children’s Services.

“We are working with a growing number of local authorities and maintain contacts with national charities in the fields of child protection and anti-bulling with the long-term objective of eradicate bullying from all our schools and communities.”

Personal information about individuals involved in bullying is restricted to authorised members of School staff. School management and Children’s Services professionals will have access to anonymous data on each incident and from regular surveys carried out across all schools in the area. This will result in joint action to develop effective anti-bullying policies and to identify bullying hotspots, trends in behaviour and the success of anti-bullying initiatives.



Vantage Technologies Limited
Vantage Technologies Limited is an IT services and solutions company, founded in 1988, specialising in the delivery of innovative software solutions for the improvement of working practice.

Vantage is active in a variety of market sectors including corporate, public sector, healthcare, police and institutions. Its product portfolio includes e-learning, nurse bank management, risk management and a range of web-based solutions.

For further information visit www.vantage-technologies.co.uk

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