Education | DSEJ to work on prevention as reports of school bullying rise

Chao Pui Leng, head of the Centre of Psycho- Pedagogical Support and Special Education of the Education and Youth Affairs Bureau (DSEJ), said yesterday in a press conference after the plenary meeting of the Non-tertiary Education Council that the bureau is working on the prevention of “bullying” in local schools.

Nevertheless, the efforts articulated by Chao seem not to be producing results, according to the official’s own figures, which show that the incidence of bullying cases has been growing.

According to Chao, in the academic year of 2017-2018 the DSEJ received a total of 175 cases of physical bullying, while in the first six months of the current academic year (2018-2019) the DSEJ has already treated a total of 112 cases of physical bullying.

Analyzing the figures indicates that during the last academic year the bureau reported on average 14.6 cases per month, while this year’s figures represent growth to 18.7 cases per month, modeling for a more or less equal distribution of cases.

Macau was mentioned on the last report of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), sponsored by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), as one of the worst performing countries on this matter out of a total of 53 participating countries and regions.

At the time, Macau’s results, in terms of the incidence of bullying in schools, were 49 percent higher than the average of the OECD countries, with only Singapore, New Zealand and Latvia scoring worse than Macau.

According to Chao, the results from PISA are difficult to square with the reports received by DSEJ. As she explained, “according to PISA 2015, the majority of the cases [addressed] is of verbal bullying and not physical, [while] the 112 cases reported until February this year are mostly focused on physical cases. […] The verbal bullying comes second and third concerns other forms of communication, like colleagues ignoring each other.”

Chao noted that DSEJ had been conducting school visits “to gather information from each school,” aiming at studying prevention measures.

The same source noted that the bureau is promoting reconciliation meetings, as well as providing training for teachers and social workers to be able to lead similar meetings in schools.

Chao also said that a “Practical Guidebook” is being developed in order to instruct school teaching staff on how to proceed regarding bullying.

“We are going to have a practical guide [book] so the teaching staff can know how to proceed and follow up with the students in such cases,” she said.

Questioned by the media about which schools have recorded a higher incidence of bullying, Chao refused to disclose the number of cases by institution saying, “we’d rather approach the problem as a whole.”

The head of the DSEJ’s Department of Education, Kong Ngai, added that according to the information collected by the DSEJ, “we notice a progressive development from verbal into relational bullying and then eventually ending with physical,” he said, observing that such facts are usually communicated to DSEJ at this last step.

“We have a new problem that has to do with the internet. We are calling on all the other people that might be aware of bullying situations occurring to report them and to speak out as soon as possible,” Kong said, noting that the aim of the DSEJ is not only to prevent cases from happening but also to reduce the potential for them to develop into more serious matters when they do eventually occur.

It is essential that responsible people follow the “N.O.T” rule (N for saying no, O for stopping the abuse by leaving the location, and T for telling someone about the case).