Chris Heaton-Harris – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Education

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Chris Heaton-Harris on 2014-03-24.

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many people with learning disabilities reported being bullied at school in each year for which figures are available.

Mr Edward Timpson

The Department for Education does not collect information on the number of people with learning difficulties reported being bullied at school.

The Government is clear that bullying, for whatever reason, is totally unacceptable. All schools are required, by law, to have a behaviour policy with measures to address all forms of bullying including that which occurs online. Schools have the freedom to shape these measures in the context of their particular local circumstances and pupils’ needs. Schools are held closely to account by Ofsted for how well they deal with pupil behaviour and safety, which includes bullying.

We are also providing £4 million of funding over two years from spring 2013 to four organisations – Beatbullying, the Diana Award, Kidscape and The Anti-bullying Alliance (ABA) with the National Children’s Bureau (NCB) – to develop effective initiatives that prevent and tackle all forms of bullying.

As part of their funding, the ABA has recently published a guide to cyberbullying for SEND young people, which contains advice for schools on developing effective anti-bullying practice and we link to this report in our Departmental advice on bullying.