www.wiltshire.gov.uk
Information for Students
If you are being bullied:
You can do something about it
- Walk away; try to stay calm and look as confident as you can
- Tell someone – if you don’t want to tell an adult by yourself, ask a friend to come with you
- Practise what you want to say – be clear about what happened, when, where and how often it has happened, who was involved, who saw what happened, what has been done already to try to stop the bullying
- Keep a diary of what is happening – and save bullying text messages or emails as ‘evidence’
- Don’t give up – keep speaking up until someone listens and does something to stop the bullying
- Ask your parents to visit the school
- Talk over what to do with a friend, a teacher, your mum or dad, a school nurse, a youth worker or someone else who you trust
- Be careful who you give your email address or mobile number to
- Don’t blame yourself – it is not your fault
By law, your school must have a policy to deal with bullying and teachers have to listen to students when they tell them about bullying. If the policy isn’t working, talk to the teachers and see if you can change the policy so that is does work.
It’s right to tell an adult that you are being bullied and to ask for their help, but you don’t have to let them take over. You can talk with them about what you would like to happen.
If you think that you are bullying other people there are some things you can do:
- Talk to someone you trust – your parents, a friend, a teacher, a youth worker, a school nurse – to try to work out why you are bullying others and how you can stop. Take a friend with you for support if it will make you feel better.
- Ask for help.
- Think about why you are behaving like this.
- If you have a difficult problem in your own life, ask for help from someone you trust.
- Apologise to those that you have upset.
- Set yourself a goal every day – Today I will not call anyone names.
- Join out-of-school clubs where you can meet new friends who don’t know how you used to behave.
REMEMBER: You’ve already taken the first step to stopping the bullying by recognising that you may have a problem.
Slippery Fish has contact details for people who can help you deal with bullying in Wiltshire
There are lots of useful websites to the right that have more information and advice about what to do if you are being bullied or if you think you are bullying others. Some deal specifically with text bullying.
If you have any comments or suggestions about the safer schools pages, please send them to saferschools@wiltshire.gov.uk or fill in and return our feedback form.
