Do schools REALLY do anything about bullying?

I was bullied in primary school by a group of boys, it ended up being physical and even though I reported it to the teachers they did nothing. So I took matters into my own hands and punched the ringleader in the face It's really horrible when a teacher decides to make snide comments about you or tries to openly humiliate you in front of the class and we've had a few teachers had classes removed from them. I remember a teacher throwing a chair at a student as well lol usually the school only bothers dealing with them once they receive a lot of emails/letters of complaint. And when the teacher finally gets wind of that classes complaints they turn on the class and act innocent.

I really question the usefulness of the anti-bullying assemblies, I am yet to be inspired by any of the crap they try and feed us during assemblies. It reminds me a lot of politics - lots of empty promises.

What would be your course of action?

Being a pussy? Such a juvenile attitude to take. You're effectively blaming teachers for school policy. Greeaaaat!

When you say 'do anything' I suppose they do have to do something but only if you prod them with a stick or if someone prods them with one. In my experience they never gave enough of **** to go out of their way to stop bullying they just did what they had to, if there had been a fight then they had to act, but if it was name calling or teasing then they'd just get on with what they called 'lessons'.

I sold cans of pop, biscuits etc. at school so I was okay at school, but ended up spending a lot of time in the library for my last two years at school after a fallout with a friend.
If you do prod them with a stick to do something about it, they do the standard procedure **** which does nothing to help you. However, in my first school for which I was only in for 1 year I recall there being a councilor who went out of his way to talk to troubled students, truly I think every school should have staff in that job roll. But, with the conservatives in power schools are run as businesses not schools, so what can you do?

They way I see it is it only gets better, and for me at least it definitely has. I did my a-levels at college rather than school and I'm starting uni in September, best decsion of my life to leave school, hated the teaching, the environment and the people. College was great despite myself having a few problems with management and teaching, but definitely a great time.
Can't wait for university.

I would inform the class of just how severe bullying can be, remind them of just quite how serious it can get, and ask people if they know who did it. Guilt the glass into action.

Collective punishment not only flies in the face of our core principles of justice, but also removes the idea in peoples minds that they should be punished for THEIR crimes.

No it's not a juvenile attitude, it's a response to your attitude. Just because there is "policy" doesn't mean you have to obey it when someone is clearly getting beaten up and hurt in front of you.
That's called being human. And it stems from an emotion called kindness which stems from empathy. You'd heed well to find some, you cynical being.

In my final year at primary school I got bullied by near enough everyone in my class. My parents phoned up the school because when we would get home I would start crying to ask them to do something about it. The head teacher's response was there is no point sorting out bullying in a year 6 class when they only have 3 months left of primary school so my Mum took it into her own hands and messaged one of the main people who bullied me mum and called the daughter a spoilt cow. That made it worse because the next day that girl got her boyfriend involved and he started punching me. The only member of staff that was there for me was one of the teaching assistants that had helped me since reception because I had speech problems and had to wear hearing aids so when she was available she use to come into my class and if I wanted to ask the teacher a question I use to tell her what I wanted to ask and she told the teacher and if I couldn't hear what the teacher said, she told me so I could understand. She done that all throughout my years at primary school.

There was this one girl who joined late in like year 8 to my school which is a good christian ethos school in a good area and she was from Russia and didn't speak at all good English but later learnt quite a bit. Anyways this girl at the beginning didn't bother anyone as she couldn't even speak English however for the same reason everyone made fun of her in so many ways and kicked her chair all the time etc. But eventually this girl did start defending herself a bit and rightly so. But it was so obvious to the teachers that she was being bullied as once I told them myself and they said they would deal with it. Not only was it upsetting her , it was also disturbing our lessons and also my education as I sat next to her sometimes. So this girl got so bullied that one day I saw her walking down the stairs talking to this popular girl at my school but a chav. I was shocked and was like thinking ' whats going on there' but minded my own business. I guess that she thought she 'made it' and was finally friends with not only someone but one of the most popular girls in school. This was at the beginning of lunch and 30 minutes later as I was walking to my next lesson I see a crowd of people around the chav. Shocked but the things I was hearing, I asked what it was and a year 8 student told me that the girl was filmed performing that 'oral act? ' on 3 boys in my year and the chav had filmed it and was showing it. The teachers did find out and confiscated her phone and excluded her along with 1 of the boys in the video. In the video the act was on 1 boy but it had happened the day before as well on multiple. There was also this other boy of the same popular group who was present and behind the camera. The video went on to be sent to almost everyone in our school and in a neighboring school. What I never will understand is why it was allowed to get this far? Why teachers didn't do anything before? Spoke to the girl and defended her. Because this led to the girl being mistrusted and taken advantage of. She would of never felt to agree to such thing if she knew that there was help and this wasn't the way to be 'cool'. Also I don't know why the boy who was by standing was never excluded. He allowed this to happen and he had always had terrible behavior.

I think that my school pretends to care about bullying as a way of making themselves sound good and like this is an amazing school but the truth is that bullying happens all the time right in front of the teachers. They are quick to notice if you are chewing gum but are oblivious to the name calling and interruption in lessons. There is an automatic 1 hour detention in my school for chewing gum. Something that causes little to no harm but are blind to the fact that half the kids in this school go home at 3:45 feeling worthless and upset. The mental effects of bullying last much longer than any harm from chewing gum. It is actually disgusting that they care so much about how they look from the outside.

There is also this thing in my school called Red Tuesdays where teachers should wear a red item of clothing every Tuesday in a way to raise awareness of bullying. First thing I thought was obviously every student knows bullying happens. No awareness to be raised. We are surrounded and all victims of it somehow. What they actually should be doing is some naming and shaming or some serious punishment. The teachers are only fooling themselves by thinking they are actually reducing bullying. I can conclude that Red Tuesday is clearly something to show to guests and prospective parents that the school 'cares' about bullying but they really don't. It is a waste of time for them and the majority of teachers are to coward to call any students out on it because they then risk that bad student to misbehave in a future lesson of theirs.

I've just recently joined up, so I have no idea where to post this thread. Feel free to move accordingly!

I'd like to start by telling my story, but you can just skim through this and answer the question, if you're too lazy to read it. I just want to highlight my own VERY EXTREME experiences with school/bullying, and I'd be happy to hear other people's too.

I come from a privileged background, so my school was a private boarding school, though I was a day student (not sure if this could have impacted my experience.) I went to this school from nursery until around year 7-8 (when the bullying got literally TOO much, see below.)

I never really had any friends there, even when I was younger. I didn't really want friends either. I was happy being alone and I know it sounds strange, but from an early age I was really interested in my studies, especially maths and science, so I tended to spend more of my time studying. People tended to just ignore or avoid me, and I liked it that way...But that didn't last long.

A boy started associating with me, and although I didn't really want friends, it felt good to actually have one. For once, I didn't feel so abnormal. I felt like I had someone to talk to. Though we didn't hang out a lot outside of school (he lived there, I didn't), I confided in him quite a lot and actually saw him as a friend.

But then for some reason, he turned against me. I have no idea why he chose me. One day, I just walked into school, and the whole school literally started laughing and calling me names. He even went as far as to tell them personal things about me that I'd trusted him with (how insecure I was about my skin - I had mild acne, how I loved my studies, how I lived in an area which wasn't as wealthy as where they'd come from - though still wealthy, etc.) He also started spreading rumors about me. This only gave everyone more fuel to bully me with.

At first, I didn't say anything to anyone, as I assumed it would blow over. It didn't. It just kept getting worse. I couldn't walk down the corridor without someone making a comment or tripping or shoving me. They called me every name under the sun, and this obviously ran into the classroom. Every time I'd get called on to answer a question they'd laugh and mutter stuff. Teachers obviously must have taken note of it by this point, or they'd be too dense to be teachers. All they did was discipline them briefly in class.

Everything I did was criticised. I had social networking sites at the time and the bullying extended to this. Every time I uploaded a picture one of them would comment saying something like "Lol Charlie thinks he's so good-looking." When I liked people's things - "Lol Charlie thinks he's actually got friends." When I posted things - "Lol Charlie thinks he's so hilarious." I was probably around 12-13 at this time. It got so bad that I had to disable wallposts and comments.

One day, I just couldn't take it anymore, and I came home crying. So I was forced to tell my mother everything. Obviously she visited the school, and they said they'd take care of it, that it wasn't tolerated, blah, blah, blah. But I couldn't even name names because it was LITERALLY the whole school. I told them about the guy who'd pretended to be my friend. He got punished for a week, made to apologise to me, but it never stopped.

My brother saw their posts on my account and threatened physical violence against them. It never stopped. They retaliated by threatening me. I just lied to my brother and pretended it'd stopped because I got a threat everyday, and they never followed through with it. It just became the normal.

I started self-harming (but that's a different story.) One of them must have saw in P.E. or something because the next story was "Charlie's slitting his wrists for attention." Again, I cried at home, and again my mother came to the school. She actually came to the school around three times, but the same process as above always happened.

After one of the times, they threatened me again. All of my texts were threats, so I didn't believe it. I went to the bus stop that night and four of them jumped me. I was in the hospital for months. My mother filed a lawsuit (she's an attorney) against them. The headteacher got fired. Three of them got sentenced, but since there were no witnesses it was hard to build a concrete case (and they were minors.) The doctors saw the marks on my arms and assumed I was going to kill myself, so did my family. I wasn't. I got involuntarily confined to a mental hospital for adolescents.

Is this seriously how bad it has to be for schools to take notice?!

I lost around a year of my life in hospitals alone.

However, my life did get better after this incident.

I went to a new school and actually made friends. Then I went to college and my life picked up even more. I met my best friend and my girlfriend last year Even though my brother had actually told people to be my friend, I made my own friends. (That made me feel awful.)

I changed myself completely. People now describe me as "confident", "popular", "attractive", etc. But I feel horrible whenever someone calls me any of these things because I'm not...I fake everything. I fake confidence. I just talk to anyone and everyone (I literally never shut up), and for some reason people take this as confidence. I'm "popular" because of my brother and because I'm "like him" in that I talk to everyone and anyone.

I'm not attractive. I've only ever told the people closest to me this, but I still have horrible skin and freckles. I actually wear foundation and concealer...Not even joking. I also really, really straighten my hair. It takes me three hours to get ready. Only my girlfriend and my brother and my now closest friends have seen my natural, horrible skin and hair. I cover up my arms at all times with bands and bracelets. I have a gym in my house that I use constantly. Now I say everything bluntly...Like I don't even care if I offend people. I just tell the truth, which is why everyone seems to for some reason like me and my posts. People also hate me because of this, but not as much as before. I actually just laugh about these people hating me now when I would've cried before last year.

So, yeah, this whole thing still haunts me, even to the point where I can't go out in my city because I'm frightened I'll see one of them. I actually saw one of them in my college (I purposefully went to a non-private college, so I wouldn't see them), and I started having a panic attack. I told my girlfriend and friend everything because they kept asking why I wouldn't go out. They've been really supportive, and with them I do go out, but I still get panicky.

We actually had a conversation about bullying. My girlfriend said she was bullied, called ugly, etc, by a group of guys. Her parents went to the school, too, and nothing was done about it. Luckily they grew out of their bullying. My other friend was bullied for being gay throughout secondary school, and again nothing was done about it.

Anyway, I guess you could say I now have a good life? But my point is that this thing has totally scarred me and I'll have to live with it forever The whole thing could have been resolved if the school had just done something before it'd escalated.

Tl;dr - I was bullied at a private school to the point where I was beaten up and hospitalised. My mother had gone to the school three times and nothing was done. Now I have a good life (?) with friends and a girlfriend, but I'll never recover from this. My confidence has been shattered beyond repair.

So...As the title states, do schools really do anything about bullying? Do they seriously only act in extreme cases like mine? Have you been bullied? If so, did your school do a good job in tackling it?

My school was out in the sticks, I have been bullied for 11 years now. What I have discovered is that they might try but they won't succeed. Bullying is just one of those things, wherever you go there will be bullying, you've just got to learn to put up with it and not let it get to you. The only reason I'm still around is cause I can take a lot of punches and they got tired. That and I cocked up when I tried the s word.
But yeah schools can't do jack. Just got to accept it I guess.

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That's the problem with everything these days, "just accept it"! In any country like the US or Australia, they certainly wouldn't "just accept it"!