Lord Ouseley – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Education

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Ouseley on 2015-12-14.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government, further to the Written Answer by Lord Nash on 9 December (HL4113), whether instances of bullying and abuse of children and young people via social media networks are reported, recorded and included in those exclusions statistics.

Earl of Courtown

Incidents of bullying and abuse of children and young people via social media by pupils which resulted in exclusions are reported to the Department. The Department publishes these incidents in its annual exclusions statistics. The latest statistics were published on 30 July 2015 and can be found online at GOV.UK.

The school census guidance provided to schools and local authorities for the 2015/16 academic year explicitly includes cyber bullying in the bullying exclusion category for the first time.

Prior to this, the guidance for the bullying category only specifically referenced verbal, physical and homophobic bullying.