A life lost through bullying

At about 5pm on Tuesday, 12 December, 2006 I returned home from work to find that my wife had had an argument with our 11 year old son, Ben, who had gone up to his room. I went to see how he was and found that he had hanged himself from his bunk bed. From the way he had done it, I obtain some comfort from believing that he had not really intended to kill himself but was just making a gesture that had gone wrong. Ben could be quite good at making big gestures.

Before this, we had been attempting to deal with a number of incidents such as when Ben had had bits of his clothing, his school jacket and tie for instance, and his mobile phone stolen. He had also named a small number of boys who were subjecting him to verbal abuse on the school bus. More worryingly, he had also begun to complain that the bus driver was joining in the abuse.

Ben’s mum and I had reported these incidents to the school, the Education Authority and the bus company responsible for supplying the dedicated school transport. We had thought that the school had taken up the matter and was dealing with it, we now know this was not the case. In fact, the school had made little practical attempt to deal with the matter. We had not used the word “bullying”, because as parents we did not have a great deal of experience of bullying and, like most parents, would not know how to recognise anything other than the most extreme forms. We had simply reported to the professionals, his teachers, some incidents that had made Ben feel very unhappy and had left it to them, as the professionals, to take the appropriate action. In the end on that fateful day things very quickly got out of hand and quickly escalated to a point where Ben took the action he did.

Immediately after Ben’s inquest a spokesman representing the local authority admitted that we had been failed at every level. The school had a bullying policy but did not follow it. There was even a member of staff who was recognised as an expert on bullying who advised other schools in the area!

After the inquest, the bus driver asked to meet us. I decided not to but my wife agreed and a meeting was arranged through a local mediation service. The driver told my wife that he genuinely liked Ben and had simply been joining in with what he thought was a bit of friendly verbal horseplay. Clearly this man was not stupid but he certainly was not sophisticated and probably should never have been in charge of a bus full of children.

The first issue I would like to raise via this blog is that there is no centralised system controlling the way children are taken to and from school in dedicated buses and the Government has resisted my requests that there should be. I understand there is now a requirement in place for drivers to have a Criminals Records Bureau check, the most basic of checks that simply shows whether someone has a criminal record or not. In my view this is inadequate. There is a real need for proper training of drivers of school buses so that they are able to be more aware of the way children behave.

There is also the question of whether someone who is supposed to be driving a bus should also be in charge of children; it is not unusual for some children to be in the bus for an hour or more before they are dropped off. It will probably surprise most people to hear that there is more legislation dealing with the transport of animals to slaughter than children to and from school, and what laws are in place deal more with the mechanical soundness of the vehicle than anything else!

I also think it is somewhat ironic that there is a prohibition on the use of mobile phones whilst driving - yet it is considered acceptable for a school bus driver to be responsible for the behaviour of their passengers. I believe there is a need for extra supervision on school buses so that drivers are left to do their job - which is to drive.

Perhaps other parents could provide accounts of their experiences, good and bad, of dedicated school transport.

*The views expressed in this article are not necessarily those of Parentline Plus