Hello
I had this article published in the Times earlier this week - it's about the so-called "summer slide" and what you can do about it.
You can see it on the Times site:
However, the article was cut somewhat, so I thought I'd put it on here in all its glory! I really think this is an interesting topic, that there's a danger some parents might try to stuff their children full of lessons all summer, while others (whose children really need to keep up with their reading, for example) do nothing.
Here you are:
By Sarah Ebner
School’s out. The holidays stretch before us and more learning is unlikely to be near the top of your children’s summer to-do list. Well, perhaps it’s time for them –and us - to think again. Don’t you know that the summer can damage your child’s brain?
I write the Times education blog, School Gate, and in the last few weeks I’ve been inundated with suggestions for ways to stop your child falling behind over the summer break. Carol Vorderman has launched her own online maths summer schools, recommending that children (aged five and over) “forge ahead with 15 minutes of fun practice a day”. She’s joined by Maths-Whizz, which offers a similar way to “beat summer learning loss” and education site MyChild, which has its own summer camp. It’s “packed with fun learning activities for each week of the summer holidays” as well as worksheets. It’s enough to make a parent paranoid.
“If you’re not being stimulated, you’re going to forget things,” says Amy Schofield, editor of MyChild. “You need to keep the brain active.”
Summer learning loss is something of a new phenomenon. It hit the headlines last year when Johns Hopkins University in America published research suggesting that schoolchildren lost an average of two months learning over the summer holidays. This was if parents failed to keep them “mentally active.”
Of course the issue does make some sense. If we adults didn’t work for six weeks, we would also probably fall behind. But we are talking about children here. Don’t they need some time off?
“My feeling is that kids do need occupying, but not like this,” says Annie Ashworth, co-author of the Madness of Modern Families. “They have a lot of intensive work throughout the year and I know that mine, for example, are exhausted by the time the summer comes. Perhaps they should read occasionally so they don’t forget how to do it. But I don’t think advanced maths is the way forward.”
Of course it was all very different in our day. Six weeks might have been filled with a short holiday, perhaps a summer camp, and lots of trips to the park and seeing friends. Now parents are being told sternly that this isn’t enough and that we’re failing our kids if we don’t keep the learning going. So should we worry? Annie Ashworth isn’t convinced.
“These stories of summer learning loss just add to parental guilt,” she says.
And even though she’s keen to promote her e-learning summer camp, Amy Schofield admits that the brain drain is new to her.
“We didn’t hear anything about it when we were kids”, she admits. “Now we’re all really child-centred and neurotic. There’s an emphasis on learning, learning, learning all the time.”
Dylan Wiliam [NB: correct spelling of Wiliam] is professor of educational assessment at the Institute of Education. He says that summer learning loss does exist, but that we need to keep it in perspective.
“There is no doubt that children learn stuff in school and forget it when they’re not in school,” he says. “There is a dip. But when it comes to seeing how serious that is and how quickly a child can make it up, then that’s a very difficult question to answer.”
Professor Wiliam also points out that most of the research on this issue is from the United States, where they have much longer summer holidays. “That definitely makes a difference,” he says.
The issue of “summer learning loss” began gathering momentum in 1992 when a group of students at Johns Hopkins tutored pupils from Baltimore public schools during the summer. The project was a great success and boosted the students’ reading scores.
At the same time, numerous academics were writing about the “summer slide” whereby academic skills dropped over the summer months. They discovered that this appeared to affect low-income students disproportionately, so widening the gap between richer and poorer.
“There are some people who allege that almost the entire difference between the performance of disadvantaged and advantaged children aged 18 is down to summer learning loss,” says Professor Wiliam. “But it also depends on the kind of curriculum you follow. If you’re talking about shallow learning, remembering facts and dates, then a child probably will forget those over a long break.”
However, what’s particularly interesting about the research is that reading aptitude seems to drop the most. This is, of course, something which parents could easily address themselves simply by encouraging their children to read over the summer or taking them to the library. It’s not really rocket science….
Tim Gill, author of No Fear: Growing Up in a Risk Averse Society, agrees. He’s horrified by the idea of summer learning and also unhappy because he feels that the issue is tied up with merchandising (Carol Vorderman’s Summer School package, for example costs a minimum of £12,99).
“No one makes money if more kids go to the park and play with other kids,” says Gill. “Children need time for themselves over the summer and especially out of doors. This is just market opportunities – latching onto anxieties and amplifying them.
“I don’t want to tell other parents how to do their job,” adds Gill, “but I just wonder who’s fuelling this. Who is looking at our kids and saying ‘wow they need more worksheets?
“It’s unquestionable that some children need more support for the basics. But the irony is that these online summer schools or worksheets are going to be done by the sharp elbowed middle classes.”
In Newhaven on the South Coast, Christine Terrey [NB: correct spelling of Terrey] runs Grays Nursery and Infant School. It’s a school which has many pupils eligible for free school meals and a high number with special needs. There aren’t many sharp elbowed middle classes to be found here. And yet the school’s learning programme has been a big success.
“I think that most schools are aware that over the summer break, children slip back in their learning,” says Terrey, who’s been headteacher at Grays for the last five years. “We’d just never investigated how much.”
Two years ago, Terrey decided to look into the matter and assessed the children before the school broke up in July and again on their return in September. She was shocked by her findings - twenty two children had a summer learning loss in reading, sixteen in writing and twelve in maths.
Terrey and her staff realised that some children weren’t looking at a book for the entire summer. “We decided we weren’t giving parents enough guidance,” she says. “Things had to change.”
The first innovation was lending school library books over the holidays. The second was to set up the Summer Fun Learning Challenge. This involved putting special pages on the school’s internet learning platform, adding links to other useful sites and recommending that children make their own scrapbooks of what they’d got up to over the break.
“Every child who made a scrapbook got a certificate, as did everyone who logged on,” says Terrey. “I saw a lot of movement on the site in August, which was great. We had no sanctions for those who didn’t get involved, only rewards and praise for those who did.”
The results were impressive. Last September, only seven children had a summer learning loss in reading, eight in writing and five in maths. Terrey is hoping for even better results this year.
“There’s always been an issue with summer learning loss,” she says firmly. “Children fall behind when they’re not doing anything. The problem is that schools didn’t know how to measure it and haven’t always planned good ways of dealing with it.”
So parents, try to make sure your children pick up a book this summer or do something else to stimulate their brains. But don’t worry too much. They’re unlikely to fall disastrously behind if times tables aren’t practised daily.
“I’m very resistant to this idea that, as parents, our job is to expend every last sinew of sweat in getting that extra grade,” says Tim Gill. “Children need time and space on their own. That’s how they are given the chance to become real people.”
Showing posts with label education. Show all posts
Showing posts with label education. Show all posts
Friday, 20 August 2010
Wednesday, 18 March 2009
The trouble with Boys
I recently read a fascinating book by Peg Tyre called The Trouble with Boys. It's all about boys and education, how boys are different from girls and having real problems with education because of the way it's set up.
I wrote about this for The Times, and you can see the piece here or below.
I also wrote a blog post on this topic for School Gate. It's called Do Boys need Boys' Schools?
All work and no play is bad for boys
Boys are falling behind at school, and many believe that the teaching methods used favour girls. What can be done?
Elaine McDowall is worried about her six-year-old son, Harry. “He's always getting told off at school,” she says. “But I know he's not naughty. He's just being a boy. He's loud and boisterous, but loud doesn't always equal bad. His teacher just wants him to be quiet, to sit and concentrate for long periods of time. I think teachers want boys to be like girls, and it's turning my son off school.”
Boys are having a hard time, whether they are 6 or 16. And the situation appears to be getting worse. Within the past few weeks it has been reported that 53 per cent of girls receive five A* to C grade GCSEs including English and Maths, compared with 44 per cent of male pupils. Fourteen girls' schools are in the top 20 listed on the basis of A-level results, while more girls take A levels than boys. Other research suggests that girls are more likely to go to university (the most recent statistics reveal a 7 per cent gap, which is expected to widen), and that 79 per cent of the children excluded from school are boys.
What has caused this downward spiral of underachievement for boys from nursery to university? The blame, says Peg Tyre, the American author of a new book, The Trouble With Boys, and the former education reporter for Newsweek, lies squarely with the school system.
An “unashamed feminist”, Tyre was brought up to worry about the achievement of girls. She was astonished to discover that it is now boys who are falling behind. “Evidence of this trend is everywhere,” she says. “People think there's something wrong with boys, but I'd say that's not necessarily true: it's what we expect of them instead.
“When you talk to boys about school, they say it's girly, that it's lots of ladies talking,” says Tyre. She argues that boys are badly served from pre-school onwards. They are not allowed to run around and not taught by enough male teachers. There has also been an educational shift away from play towards learning and targets at an earlier age.
She is convinced that reading and writing skills are the key to life and educational achievements, but says that boys are falling way behind in these skills. This is partly because they start to read later than girls, and never recover from that earlier deficit. But it is also, Tyre argues, because boys are given the wrong books to read.
“If you don't read well, you don't succeed in school,” she says. “Teachers need to be aware of the different kinds of books there are out there, and not assume that boys and girls want the same things.”
This argument has been well rehearsed in the UK. Recent research revealed that almost 50 per cent of nine-year-old boys read only “if they had to”. “Boys need to be given a reason to read,” says Sophie Quarterman of Oxford University Press, which has just brought out a “reading tree” (a scheme to help teach children to read) aimed specially at boys. “They need to feel that they will get something out of it,” she says.
Jonny Zucker, the author of the Max Flash series, which boasts a 90 per cent male readership, agrees. “Girls have a massive number of tried and tested writers,” he says. “There are not enough of these for boys.”
But like Tyre, Zucker, a father of three young sons and a former primary school teacher, says that the problem is not just with reading. It is with schools. “Up to a certain age, school is completely wrong for boys,” he says. “Because of the demands of the national curriculum, far too long is spent sitting down, whereas boys need to move around - something that isn't physically possible in classrooms.
“It's also important to get on the boys' level. If you haven't got sons or don't know boys very well, boys can be an irritant in the classroom. They make poo jokes; they try to make their friends laugh; they get more tired and are more difficult to teach. You need to allow them to let off steam.”
As Tyre says, not catering to boys' needs could have huge ramifications: “In some ways it's nice to see women on top. But we have to ask who is going to bring up the children and who are these educated women going to marry? In America there are 2.5 million more girls than boys in college, and women tend to marry men of the same level of educational attainment.” Experts appear united that something needs to be done, but recent changes have not helped boys. Children are now taught “to the test” to keep up with the national curriculum. This often means less time for PE or creative subjects, as well as cuts in playtime. More coursework instead of multiple-choice questions has also affected boys.
And despite a push to attract more men to the profession, figures from the Training and Development Agency for Schools found that half of all children between 5 and 11 have no contact with male teachers - a problem in inner cities where single-parent families are more common.
Dr Tony Sewell is chief executive of the London-based charity Generating Genius, and is trying to re-engage boys with learning. The charity was set up to help boys from underprivileged backgrounds to learn about science, and Sewell feels that it is desperately needed.
“In the 1970s and 1980s, people in education wanted to help girls to change, to get rid of the overt sexism around. That has paid off, and girls feel that the world is their oyster,” he says.
“But we've seen a parallel downturn with boys. The curriculum doesn't really meet their needs. If we look at science, it's now being taught in such a theoretical way that boys are being turned off. They need it to be much more practical, more hands-on.”
“Girls are more focused,” says Zaibien Hunter, 15, who has attended summer schools at Generating Genius. “But boys are catching up at our school because there are more male teachers and role models to encourage them.
“I know that people have a stereotype about people like me,” he adds. “They expect me to be disruptive and not to pay attention. They're shocked that I am a young black boy who is intelligent and can achieve.”
For Angela Phillips, who created a storm with her 1993 book The Trouble With Boys: A Wise and Sympathetic Guide to the Risky Business of Raising Sons, this is nothing new. But she's glad that educators and parents are finally starting to notice, and says that one solution would be for children to start school at the age of 5 or 6 as they do in other countries. “Boys mature later than girls,” she says. “Girls will shoot ahead if children start at 4. If boys fall behind at a young age, it will be very difficult for them to catch up.” Others believe that the answer lies in single-sex education, despite the so-called “social disadvantages”.
For Elaine McDowall and her son, the answer is simple. “People need to change their expectations of boys,” she says. “They need to stop assuming that boys will produce beautiful pieces of work or be interested in the same things as girls. All children have got abilities. Why should boys lose out?”
I wrote about this for The Times, and you can see the piece here or below.
I also wrote a blog post on this topic for School Gate. It's called Do Boys need Boys' Schools?
All work and no play is bad for boys
Boys are falling behind at school, and many believe that the teaching methods used favour girls. What can be done?
Elaine McDowall is worried about her six-year-old son, Harry. “He's always getting told off at school,” she says. “But I know he's not naughty. He's just being a boy. He's loud and boisterous, but loud doesn't always equal bad. His teacher just wants him to be quiet, to sit and concentrate for long periods of time. I think teachers want boys to be like girls, and it's turning my son off school.”
Boys are having a hard time, whether they are 6 or 16. And the situation appears to be getting worse. Within the past few weeks it has been reported that 53 per cent of girls receive five A* to C grade GCSEs including English and Maths, compared with 44 per cent of male pupils. Fourteen girls' schools are in the top 20 listed on the basis of A-level results, while more girls take A levels than boys. Other research suggests that girls are more likely to go to university (the most recent statistics reveal a 7 per cent gap, which is expected to widen), and that 79 per cent of the children excluded from school are boys.
What has caused this downward spiral of underachievement for boys from nursery to university? The blame, says Peg Tyre, the American author of a new book, The Trouble With Boys, and the former education reporter for Newsweek, lies squarely with the school system.
An “unashamed feminist”, Tyre was brought up to worry about the achievement of girls. She was astonished to discover that it is now boys who are falling behind. “Evidence of this trend is everywhere,” she says. “People think there's something wrong with boys, but I'd say that's not necessarily true: it's what we expect of them instead.
“When you talk to boys about school, they say it's girly, that it's lots of ladies talking,” says Tyre. She argues that boys are badly served from pre-school onwards. They are not allowed to run around and not taught by enough male teachers. There has also been an educational shift away from play towards learning and targets at an earlier age.
She is convinced that reading and writing skills are the key to life and educational achievements, but says that boys are falling way behind in these skills. This is partly because they start to read later than girls, and never recover from that earlier deficit. But it is also, Tyre argues, because boys are given the wrong books to read.
“If you don't read well, you don't succeed in school,” she says. “Teachers need to be aware of the different kinds of books there are out there, and not assume that boys and girls want the same things.”
This argument has been well rehearsed in the UK. Recent research revealed that almost 50 per cent of nine-year-old boys read only “if they had to”. “Boys need to be given a reason to read,” says Sophie Quarterman of Oxford University Press, which has just brought out a “reading tree” (a scheme to help teach children to read) aimed specially at boys. “They need to feel that they will get something out of it,” she says.
Jonny Zucker, the author of the Max Flash series, which boasts a 90 per cent male readership, agrees. “Girls have a massive number of tried and tested writers,” he says. “There are not enough of these for boys.”
But like Tyre, Zucker, a father of three young sons and a former primary school teacher, says that the problem is not just with reading. It is with schools. “Up to a certain age, school is completely wrong for boys,” he says. “Because of the demands of the national curriculum, far too long is spent sitting down, whereas boys need to move around - something that isn't physically possible in classrooms.
“It's also important to get on the boys' level. If you haven't got sons or don't know boys very well, boys can be an irritant in the classroom. They make poo jokes; they try to make their friends laugh; they get more tired and are more difficult to teach. You need to allow them to let off steam.”
As Tyre says, not catering to boys' needs could have huge ramifications: “In some ways it's nice to see women on top. But we have to ask who is going to bring up the children and who are these educated women going to marry? In America there are 2.5 million more girls than boys in college, and women tend to marry men of the same level of educational attainment.” Experts appear united that something needs to be done, but recent changes have not helped boys. Children are now taught “to the test” to keep up with the national curriculum. This often means less time for PE or creative subjects, as well as cuts in playtime. More coursework instead of multiple-choice questions has also affected boys.
And despite a push to attract more men to the profession, figures from the Training and Development Agency for Schools found that half of all children between 5 and 11 have no contact with male teachers - a problem in inner cities where single-parent families are more common.
Dr Tony Sewell is chief executive of the London-based charity Generating Genius, and is trying to re-engage boys with learning. The charity was set up to help boys from underprivileged backgrounds to learn about science, and Sewell feels that it is desperately needed.
“In the 1970s and 1980s, people in education wanted to help girls to change, to get rid of the overt sexism around. That has paid off, and girls feel that the world is their oyster,” he says.
“But we've seen a parallel downturn with boys. The curriculum doesn't really meet their needs. If we look at science, it's now being taught in such a theoretical way that boys are being turned off. They need it to be much more practical, more hands-on.”
“Girls are more focused,” says Zaibien Hunter, 15, who has attended summer schools at Generating Genius. “But boys are catching up at our school because there are more male teachers and role models to encourage them.
“I know that people have a stereotype about people like me,” he adds. “They expect me to be disruptive and not to pay attention. They're shocked that I am a young black boy who is intelligent and can achieve.”
For Angela Phillips, who created a storm with her 1993 book The Trouble With Boys: A Wise and Sympathetic Guide to the Risky Business of Raising Sons, this is nothing new. But she's glad that educators and parents are finally starting to notice, and says that one solution would be for children to start school at the age of 5 or 6 as they do in other countries. “Boys mature later than girls,” she says. “Girls will shoot ahead if children start at 4. If boys fall behind at a young age, it will be very difficult for them to catch up.” Others believe that the answer lies in single-sex education, despite the so-called “social disadvantages”.
For Elaine McDowall and her son, the answer is simple. “People need to change their expectations of boys,” she says. “They need to stop assuming that boys will produce beautiful pieces of work or be interested in the same things as girls. All children have got abilities. Why should boys lose out?”
Tuesday, 8 July 2008
Want to know about education? Read School Gate
Having spent the last year editing Supernanny.co.uk, I now have a new job, editing School Gate, a new blog for Times Online.
Please check out my blog and make comments and suggestions.
Thanks!
Please check out my blog and make comments and suggestions.
Thanks!
Thursday, 8 February 2007
Bullying: The lies that led to death and devastation
Today I have an article in the Independent about the issue of false accusations of bullying in schools.
If you want to read the article online, here's the link, http://education.independent.co.uk:80/schools/article2246762.ece
If you don't want to click and move on, then here's the piece in full....
When Lucy Cochrane was accused of bullying, her school was obliged to investigate. But the allegations were false - and now Lucy's parents are dead. What went wrong?Sarah Ebner reports on a tragic case
The Children's Commissioner, Sir Albert Aynsley-Green, has warned that relentless bullying is driving some children to the brink of suicide, while the number of children counselled by ChildLine about bullying rose by 12 per cent last year.
But what of those children who are accused of bullying, but aren't guilty? Just as it took years to recognise that charges of assault against teachers can be false, so people are starting to realise that accusing another child of bullying may simply be a way of getting them into trouble. And that trouble can have devastating results.
At the end of last year, Michael and Jane Connor were convicted of the murder of another set of parents, Maureen and Alex Cochrane. Their daughters, Natalie Connor and Lucy Cochrane, had been at the same schools and at some stage had fallen out.
Lucy, who has learning difficulties, was regarded by school staff as a pleasant but vulnerable girl who was bullied by Natalie. However, it was Natalie who claimed to her parents that Lucy was the bully, accusing Lucy of assaulting her at a dance class at school. A subsequent police investigation found the contentions to be entirely baseless, but they still had to be investigated.
Natalie's allegations, which were described during the Connors' murder trial at Manchester Crown Court as "groundless and an invention", goaded her parents and contributed to the ill-feeling between the families. The Connors plotted to set fire to the Cochranes' house and Michael Connor subsequently poured petrol through the letter box, killing both parents and seriously injuring Lucy.
Michael and Jane Connor were convicted of double murder, and Natalie Connor was convicted of manslaughter and causing grievous bodily harm with intent and arson.
Clearly this was an extreme case, but the prosecution lawyers agree that the false bullying allegations exacerbated the situation. Such claims are not entirely unusual.
"Contrary perspectives and malicious reports will always be part of bullying disputes," says Sir Albert, while John Stead, education adviser for the NSPCC and a former head teacher, agrees that false accusations are "certainly something that you come across". However, he adds, when a child makes a false accusation, it is often a cry for help.
"It's never straightforward," says Stead, who is also the Anti-Bullying Alliance co-ordinator for Yorkshire and Humberside. "Sometimes it's quite deliberate because a child wants to get someone else into trouble, but sometimes it may be that the child is unhappy because of something else, such as other children not playing with them. Occasionally there's almost a sense of delusion - the child actually believes they are being bullied."
Still, Stead is keen to emphasise that he believes most bullying accusations are true. "The danger is that children who are being bullied are ignored," he adds.
Joanna Ross (not her real name) accepts that it's important not to dismiss children who accuse others of bullying. However, she is also concerned that increased openness about the subject of bullying may be leading to false accusations. She's convinced that more care is needed with young children.
Ross's son Leo, 10, was accused of seriously bullying a younger boy towards the end of last year. The trouble began in the summer term when class teachers discussed bullying and then asked the children to fill in forms saying whether they had been bullied. One child - who was friendly with, and in the same class as, Ross's younger son, Callum - said that he had been bullied, by Leo and two of his friends. This boy, David, said that the older boys had told him to go away and said they didn't want to play with him.
Callum Ross says their teacher told David, then seven, that such behaviour was not bullying. However, the forms were filled in, and Leo and the two other boys were accused.
"Everyone thought it was minor," says Ross. "I spoke to David's father and he said that his son simply wanted to join in with the older boys and then when they didn't want him to, he would poke, prod and kick them. They would respond by cuffing him and telling him to go away. Neither of us was really concerned."
After the summer holidays, there were new, more serious allegations. David accused the boys of punching him, kicking him and kneeing him in the groin. He also said that they had "threatened to bully him more than he'd ever been bullied before".
"It was quite ironic, because one of the boys he had accused had been off sick on the days he specifically said some of these things had happened, so I really thought they couldn't be true," says Ross. "Still, it was awful. The previous term I had told Leo to keep away from David, and he assured me that he had, but as one of the oldest boys in the school, the younger ones want to play with him and his friends. David's father then came to speak to me and said he hadn't been concerned before because it was rough and tumble, but that now he felt it was getting serious. He thought there was no smoke without fire.
"He also said that the bullying had gone on for two years, even though for a lot of that time, David had been coming to my house to play with my younger son. He alleged that three times a week Leo and his friends had been kicking him, punching him and threatening him. He also said that they had been bullying his sister, Ruby, and held her upside down, threatening to drop her on her head.
"I was really worried about the whole thing, but most of it just didn't ring true. It's not simply that I would defend my own son, but the fact that when I started asking around, no one had seen any of this so-called bullying. The children attend a very small school, but none of David's friends knew anything about it, none of the teachers said that David had seemed unhappy or hurt and, despite him accusing Leo of forcing his head into the toilet on more than one occasion, no one had seen him with his hair wet or in tears."
John Stead says that falsely accusing another child of bullying is one way to seek attention.
"There aren't any easy answers when you've been falsely accused," he adds. "The biggest way we protect against false allegations is to look into it as soon as possible."
Ross agrees that, once the allegations had been made, the school had to look into them, and that they did so fairly. At this point Ruby admitted that she had made her story up, but David stuck to his.
"I think he was in a bit of a trap," says Ross. "His father had asked him many times if the accusations were true and he could have got into more trouble if he'd backed down."
However, Ross has a problem with the way the school initially went about encouraging the reports of bullying.
"The school gave out these forms and a lot of children felt they needed to fill them in," she says. "I think the school handled that badly, and I also felt the onus was on me to disprove everything. I thought they should have given my son some defence mechanism."
"Schools need to talk about what is and what isn't bullying and encourage children to talk about it," says Stead. "And I do believe we should be asking children every year how safe the school is. But I'm not sure we should be asking them to specifically name people."
Joanna Ross has some sympathy towards her son's accuser because of his age, and also because she thinks he might well have been unhappy.
"The family had moved a lot and were actually about to leave again to live abroad," she says. "It probably was disconcerting for David. His mother sent me an e-mail saying that they weren't going to pursue the accusations, that she didn't want any bother and that they would leave school a few weeks early. She also said that only the boys would 'know the truth' of what had happened.
"But that view has left my son and his friends under a cloud. If the school had actually believed David, my son would have been expelled. It's left him vulnerable and having learnt a funny lesson, that you can say bad things and get away with it.
"You have to take bullying seriously, but you also have to analyse it. Parents have to accept that children can be mean, but that's not necessarily bullying. There are noticeable symptoms when it comes to a child being bullied, but David wasn't unhappy, crying on the way to school or upset during the school day.
"If a small child picks on a big child they are in a win-win situation. If a big child lashes out, then he'll be accused of bullying. I've told Leo that he must now always walk away."
If you want to read the article online, here's the link, http://education.independent.co.uk:80/schools/article2246762.ece
If you don't want to click and move on, then here's the piece in full....
When Lucy Cochrane was accused of bullying, her school was obliged to investigate. But the allegations were false - and now Lucy's parents are dead. What went wrong?Sarah Ebner reports on a tragic case
The Children's Commissioner, Sir Albert Aynsley-Green, has warned that relentless bullying is driving some children to the brink of suicide, while the number of children counselled by ChildLine about bullying rose by 12 per cent last year.
But what of those children who are accused of bullying, but aren't guilty? Just as it took years to recognise that charges of assault against teachers can be false, so people are starting to realise that accusing another child of bullying may simply be a way of getting them into trouble. And that trouble can have devastating results.
At the end of last year, Michael and Jane Connor were convicted of the murder of another set of parents, Maureen and Alex Cochrane. Their daughters, Natalie Connor and Lucy Cochrane, had been at the same schools and at some stage had fallen out.
Lucy, who has learning difficulties, was regarded by school staff as a pleasant but vulnerable girl who was bullied by Natalie. However, it was Natalie who claimed to her parents that Lucy was the bully, accusing Lucy of assaulting her at a dance class at school. A subsequent police investigation found the contentions to be entirely baseless, but they still had to be investigated.
Natalie's allegations, which were described during the Connors' murder trial at Manchester Crown Court as "groundless and an invention", goaded her parents and contributed to the ill-feeling between the families. The Connors plotted to set fire to the Cochranes' house and Michael Connor subsequently poured petrol through the letter box, killing both parents and seriously injuring Lucy.
Michael and Jane Connor were convicted of double murder, and Natalie Connor was convicted of manslaughter and causing grievous bodily harm with intent and arson.
Clearly this was an extreme case, but the prosecution lawyers agree that the false bullying allegations exacerbated the situation. Such claims are not entirely unusual.
"Contrary perspectives and malicious reports will always be part of bullying disputes," says Sir Albert, while John Stead, education adviser for the NSPCC and a former head teacher, agrees that false accusations are "certainly something that you come across". However, he adds, when a child makes a false accusation, it is often a cry for help.
"It's never straightforward," says Stead, who is also the Anti-Bullying Alliance co-ordinator for Yorkshire and Humberside. "Sometimes it's quite deliberate because a child wants to get someone else into trouble, but sometimes it may be that the child is unhappy because of something else, such as other children not playing with them. Occasionally there's almost a sense of delusion - the child actually believes they are being bullied."
Still, Stead is keen to emphasise that he believes most bullying accusations are true. "The danger is that children who are being bullied are ignored," he adds.
Joanna Ross (not her real name) accepts that it's important not to dismiss children who accuse others of bullying. However, she is also concerned that increased openness about the subject of bullying may be leading to false accusations. She's convinced that more care is needed with young children.
Ross's son Leo, 10, was accused of seriously bullying a younger boy towards the end of last year. The trouble began in the summer term when class teachers discussed bullying and then asked the children to fill in forms saying whether they had been bullied. One child - who was friendly with, and in the same class as, Ross's younger son, Callum - said that he had been bullied, by Leo and two of his friends. This boy, David, said that the older boys had told him to go away and said they didn't want to play with him.
Callum Ross says their teacher told David, then seven, that such behaviour was not bullying. However, the forms were filled in, and Leo and the two other boys were accused.
"Everyone thought it was minor," says Ross. "I spoke to David's father and he said that his son simply wanted to join in with the older boys and then when they didn't want him to, he would poke, prod and kick them. They would respond by cuffing him and telling him to go away. Neither of us was really concerned."
After the summer holidays, there were new, more serious allegations. David accused the boys of punching him, kicking him and kneeing him in the groin. He also said that they had "threatened to bully him more than he'd ever been bullied before".
"It was quite ironic, because one of the boys he had accused had been off sick on the days he specifically said some of these things had happened, so I really thought they couldn't be true," says Ross. "Still, it was awful. The previous term I had told Leo to keep away from David, and he assured me that he had, but as one of the oldest boys in the school, the younger ones want to play with him and his friends. David's father then came to speak to me and said he hadn't been concerned before because it was rough and tumble, but that now he felt it was getting serious. He thought there was no smoke without fire.
"He also said that the bullying had gone on for two years, even though for a lot of that time, David had been coming to my house to play with my younger son. He alleged that three times a week Leo and his friends had been kicking him, punching him and threatening him. He also said that they had been bullying his sister, Ruby, and held her upside down, threatening to drop her on her head.
"I was really worried about the whole thing, but most of it just didn't ring true. It's not simply that I would defend my own son, but the fact that when I started asking around, no one had seen any of this so-called bullying. The children attend a very small school, but none of David's friends knew anything about it, none of the teachers said that David had seemed unhappy or hurt and, despite him accusing Leo of forcing his head into the toilet on more than one occasion, no one had seen him with his hair wet or in tears."
John Stead says that falsely accusing another child of bullying is one way to seek attention.
"There aren't any easy answers when you've been falsely accused," he adds. "The biggest way we protect against false allegations is to look into it as soon as possible."
Ross agrees that, once the allegations had been made, the school had to look into them, and that they did so fairly. At this point Ruby admitted that she had made her story up, but David stuck to his.
"I think he was in a bit of a trap," says Ross. "His father had asked him many times if the accusations were true and he could have got into more trouble if he'd backed down."
However, Ross has a problem with the way the school initially went about encouraging the reports of bullying.
"The school gave out these forms and a lot of children felt they needed to fill them in," she says. "I think the school handled that badly, and I also felt the onus was on me to disprove everything. I thought they should have given my son some defence mechanism."
"Schools need to talk about what is and what isn't bullying and encourage children to talk about it," says Stead. "And I do believe we should be asking children every year how safe the school is. But I'm not sure we should be asking them to specifically name people."
Joanna Ross has some sympathy towards her son's accuser because of his age, and also because she thinks he might well have been unhappy.
"The family had moved a lot and were actually about to leave again to live abroad," she says. "It probably was disconcerting for David. His mother sent me an e-mail saying that they weren't going to pursue the accusations, that she didn't want any bother and that they would leave school a few weeks early. She also said that only the boys would 'know the truth' of what had happened.
"But that view has left my son and his friends under a cloud. If the school had actually believed David, my son would have been expelled. It's left him vulnerable and having learnt a funny lesson, that you can say bad things and get away with it.
"You have to take bullying seriously, but you also have to analyse it. Parents have to accept that children can be mean, but that's not necessarily bullying. There are noticeable symptoms when it comes to a child being bullied, but David wasn't unhappy, crying on the way to school or upset during the school day.
"If a small child picks on a big child they are in a win-win situation. If a big child lashes out, then he'll be accused of bullying. I've told Leo that he must now always walk away."
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