Building Respectful and Safe Schools supports schools to prevent and respond to bullying and all forms of unacceptable behaviour including harassment, discrimination or violence. The definitions below are adapted from Bullying. No Way!, the joint Australian Education Authorities website, developed by Australia’s educational communities including the Victorian Department of Education and Early Childhood Development.
Bullying
Bullying is when someone, or a group of people, deliberately upset or hurt another person or damage their property, reputation or social acceptance on more than one occasion. There is an imbalance of power in incidents of bullying due to age, size, status or other reasons.
Bullying may occur because of perceived differences such as culture, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, ability or disability, religion, body size and physical appearance, age or economic status. Bullying may be motivated by jealousy, distrust, fear, misunderstanding or lack of knowledge. It can continue over time, is often hidden from adults and will probably continue if no action is taken.
Types of bullying
There are four broad types of bullying:
- Direct physical bullying: includes hitting, kicking, tripping, pinching and pushing or damaging property.
- Direct verbal bullying: includes name calling, insults, teasing, intimidation, homophobic or racist remarks, or verbal abuse.
- Indirect bullying: is often harder to recognise and can be carried out behind the bullied person’s back. It is designed to harm someone’s social reputation and/or cause humiliation. Indirect bullying includes:
- lying and spreading rumours
- playing nasty jokes to embarrass and humiliate
- mimicking
- encouraging others to socially exclude someone
- damaging someone’s social reputation or social acceptance.
- Cyberbullying: is direct verbal or indirect bullying behaviours using digital technologies. This includes harassment via a mobile phone, setting up a defamatory personal website or deliberately excluding someone from social networking spaces.
What bullying is not
Many distressing behaviours are not examples of bullying even though they are unpleasant and often require teacher intervention and management.
- Mutual conflict: involves an argument or disagreement between people but not an imbalance of power. Both parties are upset and usually both want a resolution. Unresolved mutual conflict can develop into bullying if one of the parties targets the other repeatedly in retaliation.
- Social rejection or dislike: is not bullying unless it involves deliberate and repeated attempts to cause distress, exclude or create dislike by others.
- Single-episode acts: of nastiness or physical aggression are not the same as bullying. If someone is verbally abused or pushed on one occasion they are not being bullied. Nastiness or physical aggression that is directed towards many different people is not the same as bullying. However, this does not mean that single episodes of nastiness or physical aggression should be ignored or condoned as these are unacceptable behaviours.
Unacceptable behaviour
Unacceptable behaviour in the school environment refers to a wide range of behaviours that are not acceptable or appropriate, as outlined in a school’s Student Engagement Policy. This includes harassment, discrimination, and a threat or act of violence.
Harassment
Harassment is behaviour intended to annoy, disturb, threaten or upset another person. Harassment and bullying may involve similar behaviours as both usually involve a person or group of people who have, or are perceived to have, more power deliberately upsetting someone on more than one occasion. Harassment may also occur because of perceived differences such as culture, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation or religion.
Sexual harassment is unlawful behaviour under the Commonwealth Sex Discrimination Act 1984 and the Victorian Equal Opportunity Act 1995. It occurs when a person engages in any unwelcome or unreciprocated conduct of a sexual nature (written or verbal), in circumstances which could reasonably be expected to cause offence, humiliation or intimidation.
Discrimination
Discrimination is treating a person or group less fairly or well because of a particular characteristic such as culture, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, ability or disability, religion, body size and physical appearance, age, or marital, parenting, or economic status. Discrimination commonly involves exclusion or rejection.
The Guidelines for managing cultural and linguistic diversity in schools (PDF - 408Kb) (pdf - 408.18kb) outline that discrimination may be direct, whereby a person is treated less favourably because of their race, ethnicity, culture or another characteristic. It can also be indirect when a person makes a decision or imposes a requirement, which appears neutral but is unreasonable and has the effect of disadvantaging a person because of their race, ethnicity, culture or another characteristic.
Conduct which causes someone to suffer a detriment or to be treated less favourably than someone else because of their race can be racial discrimination. The term detriment is very broad and includes emotional and physical detriment.
Racial discrimination means any distinction, exclusion, restriction or preference based on race which has the effect of impairing a person’s enjoyment, recognition or ability to exercise a human right.
Violence
Violence is the damaging and destructive use of force by a person or group towards another person, group, or property. This force can be physical, verbal, sexual or another action or behaviour and can involve an ongoing relationship between the parties.
Violence may involve provoked or unprovoked acts and can be a one-off incident or can occur over time. Violence may be used by those targeted by bullying or other unacceptable behaviour to try to redress the imbalance of power. A threat of violence is words or gestures expressing intent to use an act of force against a person.
Violence against women is defined by the United Nations as any act of gender-based violence that results in, or is likely to result in, physical, sexual or psychological harm or suffering to women, including threats of such acts, coercion, or arbitrary deprivation of liberty, whether occurring in public or in private life. The most common forms of violence against women are family violence and sexual assault.