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Education and Inspections Bill

The noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, has anticipated my remarks entirely. We intend to proceed by way of guidance and I shall say a little more about that in a moment. By way of introduction, we entirely agree with the noble Baroness and other speakers in this short debate. As my noble friend Lord Judd said, bullying in all its forms is one of the great evils that our schools have to confront, and we have a good deal further to go before we can claim to have confronted it successfully. We agree wholeheartedly with the intention behind the new clause proposed by the noble Baroness. Schools have a well established duty of care to all their pupils. This is interpreted as a duty to take care of pupils in their charge, as a reasonably prudent parent would in like circumstances, including a duty to take positive steps to protect their well-being. A prudent parent would of course act to ensure that his or her child’s physical safety was secured and would take positive steps to protect his or her well-being, regardless of sexuality. That is exactly the duty that schools are under in respect of their pupils. The bullying of homosexual pupils is rightly seen as a serious concern. Clause 82(1)(b) requires a head teacher to determine measures to be taken with a view to, "““encouraging good behaviour and respect for others on the part of pupils and, in particular, preventing all forms of bullying among pupils””—" that is in the Bill at the moment— "““in particular, preventing all forms of bullying among pupils””." That provision means what it says. Head teachers must ensure that their school’s behaviour policy deals with all forms of bullying, including homophobic bullying and bullying relating to race, religion and culture, as well as cyber-bullying—an increasingly prevalent form of bullying, about which the Government issued guidelines only today. We agree with many of the points made in the debate but we do not think that singling out one group in the Bill would be advantageous. We expect schools to take action against discrimination and bullying directed against any group, but we need to do more to help schools to turn good intentions and policies into practice. That is why my department is committed to providing comprehensive guidance on bullying that is driven by prejudice. We have already issued guidance on bullying related to race, religion and culture. This morning, as I said, we issued guidelines in respect of cyber-bullying, and that will be followed by guidance early next year on tackling homophobic bullying. As well as advice on dealing with specific incidents, the guidance in respect of homophobic bullying will focus on prevention, including promoting a school environment in which homophobic bullying does not occur. We will consult widely on the preparation of this guidance with a view to establishing the broadest possible consensus and momentum for real change and improvements on the part of schools to meet the issues raised by the noble Baroness.