Legal

NSW GOVERNMENT RESPONSE

to the

REPORT OF THE

LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL GENERAL PURPOSE STANDING COMMITTEE NO 2

INQUIRY INTO BULLYING OF CHILDREN AND YOUNG PEOPLE

MAY 2010

RECOMMENDATION 1: That the Minister for Education and Training require the Department of Education and Training and all registered training organisations to annually collect data on the level of bullying among apprentices and trainees, and that this data be collated by the Department, with appropriate protections for the privacy of individuals, institutes, colleges and registered training organisations. Further, the Department should be required to take action in relation to any problems that are identified in the data. RESPONSE: Partially Supported. The Department of Education and Training including TAFE NSW supports the development of effective approaches to addressing bullying of children and young people. It is noted that limited evidence on the bullying of apprentices and trainees was presented to the Committee and that as a consequence the Committee could “only make limited comment on this issue”. The Department also notes the Committee’s acknowledgment of “the inherent barriers to centralised data collection on the level of school bullying in New South Wales”. There is no universally agreed definition of bullying and a clear distinction needs to be made between bullying and peer violence. The term ‘bullying” is often used incorrectly to describe any type of conflict between individuals. In his February 2010 report Enhancing Responses to Bullying in Queensland Schools, Dr Ken Rigby stated that a differentiation needs to be made “between ‘bullying’ and other forms of undesirable interpersonal behaviour, such as random acts of aggression, conflicts between individuals of equal strength or power and the non-malicious exclusion of individuals”. There are also “methodological concerns surrounding the collection of consistent and comparable data.” In addition, there are inherent...