Edinburgh is the first Scottish council to publish figures on bullying. They showed that 375 incidents were reported in primary schools last year, an average of four incidents per school throughout the sessions, and 298 cases of bullying were recorded in secondary schools.
No incidents were reported by nursery schools. Eighteen per cent of the bullying incidents recorded occurred among five-to seven-year-olds, but bullying peaked in the higher stages of primary school and lower secondary school years.
In primary schools most of the reported incidents were not considered to be discriminatory in nature, but nine incidents involved pupils being bullied because of a disability, seven because of gender and six because of pupils' perceived sexual orientation. A child's weight, size, body shape, hair, glasses, family background, accent or religion were also given as triggers for bullying, as was being new to the school.
Strategies currently used in Edinburgh schools to reduce bullying include buddy systems and mentoring, playground games and supervision, circle time, leaflets and campaigns and in-service training for staff.
Edinburgh Council director of education Roy Jobson said, 'We all know bullying exists in schools everywhere. Unless children can come forward confident in the knowledge that their complaints and concerns will be taken seriously, bullying will continue to go on in silence.
'By collecting and, most importantly, publicly reporting our new statistics on bullying incidents, we are taking a bold step and sending a clear message to children, young people, parents and the wider community - preventing bullying is an issue that must concern us all.
'We are working closely with our schools to reduce bullying and there are a wide range of innovative approaches and strategies in our schools to combat bullying and encourage positive behaviour. This report will provide further valuable information and see what further steps need to be taken.' Andrew Mellor, manager of the Edinburgh-based Anti-Bullying Network, welcomed the collated figures, but said he was not surprised by them.
'Collecting and releasing these statistics is not an easy thing to do,' he said.
'We now have to look at the figures carefully and learn lessons from them as they are interpreted. These statistics are of recorded serious incidents as they were observed by teachers, so we are sure there are many more incidents that have gone unrecorded and the figures do not show the whole extent of the problem.
'We would now like other local authorities to look at what Edinburgh has done and think about assessing bullying in their area and evaluating the response.'