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According to the National Association of School Psychologists in the USA, 160,000 children miss school every day for fear of bullying (Newman, Fox, Harding, Mehta, & Roth, 2005).

Research carried out by Sullivan (2000) has found that bullying in schools is a major problem in many countries around the world. His in-depth research took Sullivan to the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand.Lind and Maxwell's 1996 study as cited in Sullivan, 2000, included a survey of North Island, New Zealand students in Forms 1 & 2. It revealed that bullying was the second worst experience they had had. The worst being the death of somebody close to them. This highlights the severity of bullying for children. Bullying takes place on the way to and from school, in the playground and in the classroom. It takes the form of:

and non-verbal acts such as pulling faces, making rude gestures, deliberately excluding or ignoring someone, sending notes etc.
 * Physical bullying such as biting, kicking, hitting etc and damaging of other people's property.
 * Non-physical bullying such as verbal abuse - name calling teasing, racist comments, spreading malicious rumours

With the rapid advancement of technology a new form of bullying has emerged, labelled as cyber-bullying and takes place through text messaging, e-mailing and social networking websites such as bebo and facebook. This has truly taken bullying as a global issue to new heights. It is extremely worrying for all concerned that children, particularly teenagers have such a misguided understanding of the dangers they expose themselves to through revealing personal information and photos of themselves and friends online. It is vital that parents and educators work together to teach online safety to these vulnerable students. To this end I have included websites that deal specifically with [|internet safety] issues.

Newman et al (2005) have found that schools practice "structural secrecy." This means that though they possess a large amount of information about students it is not often collated in one place. Different staff members have different information about each student and deal with it in different ways. Some deal with minor incidences and some ignore them. It is easier to get the whole picture in a primary school as students are with the same teacher for the whole day but not so in a secondary school. Sociological ideas such as "labelling theory" supports student privacy in that schools should deliberately lose information about students to avoid prejudicing their chances with future teachers i.e. they deserve a clean slate at the start of each year. If this is a culture supported within a school then students with a pattern of minor incidents will go unrecorded. Schools have the technology and expertise to collect, integrate and disseminate information so issues around student privacy need to be addressed before an anti-bullying programme is put in place.

Sullivan (2000) also states that "In the literature on effective anti-bullying strategies, one issue stands out as being most important- the adoption of a whole school approach..." (p 4). This is extremely important if bullying is to be dealt with effectively. Schools need to have a policy in place for bullying. An example of a primary school policy can be found here. I believe when all parties are focused on the same goal and keep in mind the ultimate aim of their school policy they will be more effective in eliminating bullying from their school. Guidelines must be clearly defined. All school staff, students, parents and the community need to understand and implement the policy. If only a few are "on board" with the policy the programme will be doomed from the start. It is the responsibiity of the whole community to establish a bully-free environment.

Suicide rates amongst young people in New Zealand are climbing annually. Suicide is ranked second as the leading cause of death in young people aged between 10 and 19.Many people name bullying as a major contributing factor in youth suicide. Bullying needs to be addressed in the home, school, workplace and in society in general.