Sarah Wellard reports on a school where the students themselves are trained and supported to combat bullying.

Kingsbury High School is a large comprehensive built in the 1960s in a leafy north London suburb surrounded by playing fields. Many of the 2,000 pupils come from middle-class families but the school also has its share of pupils from disadvantaged homes. The catchment area covers three council estates, including a new one where many families have been rehoused from a notorious high-rise Wembley estate. And, like probably any school in the UK, Kingsbury also has its share of bullying.

Stephen, a year 13 (lower sixth) student explains that bullying among the boys is often linked with gang membership, and the victims are pupils seen by gang leaders as a threat to their own position in the hierarchy. "It’s often people from underprivileged families who are in the gangs because they need the stability. The bullies have an insecurity. They stick together and have similar attitudes - there’s a racial edge to it. Everyone tries to fit in because they don’t want to be an outsider."

Abbena, also in year 13, believes bullying among girls can be just as serious. "The girls can be really horrible when they gang up against someone," she says. "Everyone will keep onside and be spiteful. It’s more vicious when the boys do it because it’s physical, but it’s the emotional scars that you don’t forget. It makes people feel as though they’re not worth anything."

Both students are peer counsellors in the school’s Connect project, set up in response to concerns about bullying. Around 90 pupils from years 9 to 13 are now involved in the project, acting as peer supporters and counsellors. They provide a range of services including playground patrols to watch out for pupils looking vulnerable, a lunchtime drop-in where people can play games and talk to supporters, one-to-one counselling and a website providing confidential advice by e-mail, so students can talk anonymously to project workers. The project is regarded as a model of good practice and in 2001 won the Phillip Lawrence Award.

The peer supporters work with strict confidentiality guidelines. They also have guides setting out what to do if serious issues come up - abuse, teenage pregnancy, involvement in criminal activity or drug-taking for example - and when to talk to a teacher or the school counsellor.

Abbena and Phillip show me round the school, indicating places where children may be most vulnerable to being picked on. In the playground there are the usual groups of boys playing football, and there’s also an informal basketball match going on. Most of the girls are just hanging around chatting. "We keep an eye on people who are on their own and aren’t part of a group." There is also a courtyard where a mixed group are playing boisterously - not a teacher in sight, and exactly the kind of place where bullying might happen.

Abbena explains that peer supporters also keep an eye on what is going on in the corridors before lessons. "Sometimes you can tell from body language that something’s not right." So if they see something is wrong, do they intervene there and then? As an older student, Abbena does not find lower school pupils intimidating and has no qualms about getting involved. But in a large school where lower school pupils are in a separate building, she and her fellow sixth formers aren’t often around, which is one of the reasons why a formalised rota system is helpful. Most of the patrolling day-to-day is done by peer supporters in Years 10 and 11.

The anti-bullying strategy begins at the end of the summer term even before pupils start at the school, with peer supporters from year 9 making visits to talk to year 6 pupils in local primaries. This year, students performed a play to raise awareness of issues to do with bullying. Vishmit, in year 10, explains how Connect’s buddy system works. "When Year 6 come for their induction, we introduce ourselves so they can get to know us," he says. "One of us gets assigned to each form and we make friends with them. We go in during form periods and play games and things to create a link."

Ita MacNamara, assistant head teacher, is the project co-ordinator. She set up the project 5 years ago with the support of the then head teacher, who was horrified to find that three-quarters of pupils responding to a questionnaire said they had experienced bullying. Kingsbury High was one of six London schools to get money from the Mental Health Foundation for training young people in listening skills. MacNamara explains: "Relate provided training for 55 pupils and the school set up a one-to-one listening service. Basically it was a waste of space - only six people turned up. It was the pupils who said we needed to go out to where they are. So we set up the playground service."

The next step was to establish assertiveness training for both victims and perpetrators of bullying, run by peer workers in Year 13 trained by Relate. MacNamara says: "The kids enjoyed it - they built up a good rapport with the Year 13 peer worker. But we found we weren’t getting value for money because the peer workers were leaving. So now the school counsellor does the training, starting at Year 9."

She adds: "We’re a big project, but I feel my management of it is almost at an end. The young people are now taking over and moving it further forward. One idea is to develop a buddy system for pupils experiencing problems and at risk of exclusion."

So how has Connect changed the school? MacNamara says: "A lot of the staff and pupils feel the atmosphere has got better. The number of playground fights has gone down. I can’t remember the last time we had one. The peer workers are the eyes and ears of the school and they see things happening. They won’t tolerate bullying."

It’s no longer acceptable for head teachers to claim: "Bullying doesn’t happen in this school." Growing recognition of the impact bullying can have on children’s achievement as well as their emotional well-being is forcing schools to give much greater priority to tackling the issue. New research from the Thomas Coram Research Unit at the Institute of Education¹ indicates that more than half of secondary school pupils regard bullying as a problem in their school and a quarter say they have been bullied themselves "this term."

According to Simon Blake, assistant director at the National Children’s Bureau and chairperson of the Peer Support Network, there has been a big growth in peer support schemes aimed at tackling bullying over the past four or five years, reflecting a long overdue shift towards seeing children as partners in education. Over a decade after the ratification of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Last year’s Education Act enshrines in law pupils’ right to a voice in decisions that affect them.

Helen Cowie, research professor and director of the centre for peer, family and organisational relationships at the University of Surrey has carried out several studies on peer support. She found two main benefits. "One was that the school climate definitely improved. People became more comfortable about talking things through. The victims also reported that they were helped - some but not all of them - but the biggest beneficiaries were the peer supporters themselves. They became pro-active in helping people and developed good skills in active listening and empathy."

In a follow-up study two years later, pupils were taking more charge of projects and developing ways of working that were more acceptable to pupils. Cowie says: "They said that pupils didn’t like going to a special room and so were doing things like keeping an eye on and just chatting to people at break times."²

She found that boys are just as good as girls at being peer supporters, but are often less willing to come forward. She says: "Around 80 per cent of peer supporters are girls. Boys do have the qualities needed but they are under pressure from their peer group to be macho. Sometimes it’s a matter of presentation. Boys don’t want to be involved in counselling so it needs to be presented as problem-solving and conflict resolution."

She believes that having male teachers co-ordinating peer support projects is also helpful: "Eighty per cent of teachers leading are women so one suggestion is that more men should be co-ordinators to provide a positive role model."

So does peer support actually reduce bullying? Cowie says it is hard to say because pupils may start reporting bullying more once a project is set up. "But the peer supporters believe it does. They say the bullies know that people are watching. The perception is that relationships in the school are better." She adds, "Bullying takes so many forms and is quite insidious. No one has really been able to reduce it dramatically."

Claude Knights, training manager at the children’s safety charity Kidscape, is convinced that peer support can be effective. "Peer support can’t do everything on its own, but the research shows it does make a difference. It’s about creating a climate of trust and pupils believing that speaking about bullying will lead to a positive response. Along with things like a strong tutor system, having a peer counselling system means younger members of the school are more likely to tell. They are more likely to talk to someone closer in age."

Peer-led anti-bullying projects need to be part of a range of responses if they are to work. Knights says: "Sometimes we get a call from a school wanting to set up a project in response to a bad Ofsted report or a parent badgering them. But it isn’t going to be effective unless it’s part of a wider anti-bullying policy and the whole school accepting responsibility for pastoral care. Everyone from the school secretary and lunchtime assistant to the maths teacher needs to be on board."

She adds: "There needs to be lots of work in PSE [personal and social education] telling young people that the supporters are there and what they can do to help. Otherwise you get lots of committed supporters sitting around but you don’t tap into the worst problems."

But well-developed peer support projects like the one at Kingsbury High are still few and far between. Blake says, "It’s not necessarily financial resource issues that are holding people back. There are lots of funds available but people aren’t always accessing them. It’s more to do with pressures of the curriculum and the focus on standards. People don’t always see that [peer support] isn’t on the edge of school life but is right at the heart of it." Programmes like the Healthy Schools Initiative, the Children’s Fund and the Neighbourhood Renewal Fund can also be used to pay for training and co-ordination costs.

And peer support schemes take several years to develop. Blake observes, "It’s not a quick-fix solution. People have to build confidence as supporters and people have to build confidence in accessing the support. It doesn’t happen overnight."

¹ C Oliver and M Candappa, Tackling Bullying: Listening to the Views of Children and Young People, Department for Education and Skills, 2003

² H Cowie, & P Wallace, Peer Support in Action, Sage, 2000