NEWS RELEASE

17 March 2009

Bullying In Schools Part Of Kwi Mentality

Mountaineer and co-founder of the Foundation for Youth Development Graeme Dingle has waded into the bullying in schools debate saying that he believes the Kiwi mentality is to accept bullying as an every day part of school life.

Dingle said he believes that bullying has always been a part of the Kiwi psyche and that tolerance to it has simply increased to the point where it is now considered to be the norm.

“This simply doesn’t have to be the case and as a country we need to be proactive about putting the wheels in motion from the start by instilling skills and values about positive relationship building in children at a very young age.

“Bullying is not a new issue and the recent Office of the Children's Commissioner’s report School Safety: An Inquiry into the Safety of Students at School has simply served to highlight the extent of the problem.”

He said there was no need for ‘one hit wonder’ approaches such as shortening lunch breaks or staggering class release times which don’t have a lasting effect.

“Instead, we all need to look closely at what works and build on already established models.”

Dingle said the Foundation for Youth Development already has a number of programmes in place that have proven to be effective in dealing with bullying.

“Bullying can be easily combated through the implementation of successful preventative strategies already used in the Foundation’s programmes - Kiwi Can, Stars and Project K. Evaluation of all three of our programmes show positive results for their anti-bullying strategies.

“Kiwi Can is aimed at young children instilling life skills and values that include teaching participants about respecting others, as well as building and maintaining positive relationships. Stars gives year9 students a sense of positive belonging to their school community and includes a peer mentoring component, while Project K builds confidence in 14 and 15 year olds and helps them become confident individuals with a sense of purpose and direction in their lives-,” Dingle said

He said the results of the programmes have been far reaching.

“Introduction of our Kiwi Can programme at a low decile primary school resulted in bullying being wiped out among students within one term. Similarly, with Stars we’ve had the number of stand downs for bullying significantly reduced in a short time. We’ve had many Project K students who were being bullied and lacked confidence, turn their lives around to take out top awards and become head boys and girls of schools across the country.

“At the end of the day, bullying can be easily dealt with. All that is needed is the commitment of everyone involved to tackle the problem head on and collectively agree that it is unacceptable.”

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