Bullying remains a matter of real concern for school children and their parents. Its consequences in the lives of children, and their families and friends, can be utterly devastating. There have been long and hard-fought campaigns for decades now to require schools in Northern Ireland to do more to stamp out bullying, in all of its forms.
The issue was last taken up in Northern Irish legislation in the Education and Libraries (Northern Ireland) Order 2003. Article 19 of the 2003 Order explicitly amended article 3 of the Education (Northern Ireland) Order 1998, with regard to schools’ discipline policies, to require that prevention of bullying be specifically addressed in those policies.
However, having a robust anti-bullying policy is not enough - it must be implemented - a simple adherence to the anti-bullying policy will not necessarily result in a school having discharged its legal obligations to a pupil.
In a lesser-known Northern Ireland county court case in 2014, a deputy district judge heard a claim brought by/on behalf of a school pupil, for compensation against his school, in relation to bullying that pupil had suffered at the school. The pupil claimed that the school had negligently failed in taking sufficient, and sufficiently expeditious, action to protect him from being subjected to bullying. The judge agreed and found that the school had breached its duty of care to the pupil, as a result of which he had suffered a mental injury - awarding the claimant £10,000.
What was interesting about the reported judgment from that case is that the judge found there to be an immediate read-across between bullying in schools and bullying in the workplace, citing a number of employment law cases in his written decision. The judge made use of those authorities, not only for the definition of bullying that ought to be applied in the immediate context, but also to define the extent of the school’s duty of care towards the claimant - for example, quoting this excerpt from the English and Welsh High Court case of Green v DB Group Services (UK) Ltd [2006] EWHC 1898 (QB) (a case that concerned bullying in the workplace):
“Had the claimant’s managers intervened as they ought to have done, there were obvious steps that could have been taken to stop the bullying. It ought to have been made clear that such behaviour was simply unacceptable, and those involved warned that if they persisted, disciplinary action would follow…by whatever means the bullying could and should have been stopped.”
It is understood that the school did not appeal.
What is clear from the case is that simply “following the anti-bullying policy” does not equate to the school having discharged its legal obligations in this context. Rather, it is required to take whatever steps are necessary and available to it to prevent a pupil from being subjected to bullying - particularly where there are continuing acts of bullying against a pupil that the school is aware of. It is here that the school must legally act expeditiously, and by whatever reasonable means available, to stamp it out.
Brian Moss is an associate at Worthingtons Solicitors in Belfast. His specialisms include education law
