'Abused and intimidated': Australia a world leader in school bullying
By Jordan Baker
November 29, 2019 — 12.01am
Australian principals report far higher rates of bullying between students, intimidation of teachers and cyber harassment than the international average, prompting warnings that a wider culture of violence is spilling into schools.
More than a third of secondary school principals said intimidation and bullying occurred at least weekly between students, compared with an OECD average of 14 per cent, the Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) found.
One in six said unwanted electronic contact between students happened weekly, compared to the OECD average of three per cent, while 12 per cent said students abused and intimidated teachers every week.
Australian schools have more bullying, violence and cyber harassment than the OECD average. Credit:Quentin Jones
"Physical injury caused by violence among students is also reported to occur at least weekly in seven per cent of Australian schools compared to just under two per cent internationally," the report said.
Sue Thomson from the Australian Council for Educational Research, the co-author of the Australian analysis of the findings released on Thursday, said the survey matched feedback from students. "I think these [results] are really quite worrying," she said.
"I feel as though it's reflective of the standing of teachers in the general population. In other countries there's a deep respect for teachers and these things don't happen in those countries. Part of it is a lack of respect for authority."
The director of the Principal Health and Wellbeing Survey, Professor Phil Riley from Deakin University, said bullying appeared to be a particular problem within Australian culture, which went beyond schools.
"Levels of violence, intimidation ... is happening everywhere," he said. "Whenever there is any high level of emotion involved, it seems to me that Australians tend to go to violence pretty quickly compared with other places. Children are imitating what they're seeing."
Professor Riley said addressing the problem would require an honest, national conversation. "This is where we're at ... how do we get out of it?" he said. "I'm not sure within the current political climate we are ready for that.
"We have a strong blame game in politics. Nobody is prepared to own up to anything."
More than 3500 lower secondary teachers and 230 principals participated in the survey, which found Australian schools have more students with special needs, migrant backgrounds and non-native speakers than the OECD average.
The survey also showed Australian teachers in disadvantaged classrooms spent six minutes less of their class time per hour on teaching and learning than colleagues in more advantaged schools, which added up to 100 fewer hours over a year.
"If every teacher is having similar issues, then that's a lot less access to learning," said Dr Thomson."[The reason] will be classroom management issues – it could be as simple as all the kids don't have the right equipment, the right textbooks."
Australian teachers also wanted more training in teaching students with special needs, were more likely to use technology in classrooms, and were content with the level of infrastructure in their schools.
The main resourcing issue was technology, with about a third of teachers in disadvantaged schools saying their lack of technology hampered instruction and almost a quarter saying their school had inadequate internet access.
Jordan Baker
Jordan Baker is Education Editor of The Sydney Morning Herald