Preventing Peer Victimisation in Schools

crime. Where children are involved, it is typically as victims of adult perpetrators. But clearly children are sometimes the victims of other children. When this occurs, it is often described as ‘bullying’ and there is usually no ‘crime’ as such recognised. For countless years peer victimisation or ‘bullying’, as we shall call it, was regarded as part and parcel of ‘going to school’, largely unavoidable for some with little or no harm done. However, in the last few years there has been a remarkable change in the way bullying at school is regarded. Beginning in Scandinavia in the 1970s with the pioneering work of Professor Olweus from the University of Bergen in Norway, interest spread to the United Kingdom in the late eighties; over the last five years there has been growing concern about school bullying in Australia. Peer victimisation in schools is, in my view, an important area for victimologists to study. This is firstly because the harm that it does has been greatly underestimated. Secondly, because it sets a pattern for subsequent interactions involving victimisation in the wider adult society. And finally because we now know that there are measures that can be taken to significantly reduce it. In this paper I shall concentrate on the phenomenon of bullying, which in many schools is a major means of victimisation. ‘Bullying’ is of course an emotive term, and its use has a strong impact on students and teachers. Once its essence has been grasped, most, if not all people, want to consider how it can be stopped. The definition of bullying which I prefer is an adaptation of that proposed by the British criminologist, Farrington, in 1993. It may be defined as follows: ‘repeated oppression, psychological or physical of a less powerful person by a more powerful individual or group of persons.’ Preventing Peer Victimisation in Schools