Eradicate persecution drop by drop – Newspaper Kommersant No. 190 (7391) of 10/13/2022

“Victim”, “participant”, “organizer” and “observer of harassment” – such terms are proposed by a group of State Duma deputies to be included in the current law “On Education”. Appropriate amendments will be submitted to Parliament next week. As Kommersant found out, this is just the beginning of a large-scale fight against school bullying. The authors of the bill propose that the Ministry of Education adopt a state program for the prevention of bullying and a single standard for the prevention of bullying. And then educational institutions will have to prepare their local anti-bullying acts. Sanctions for violators are proposed to be prescribed in the Code of Administrative Offenses.

The State Duma has prepared a bill (available to Kommersant) aimed at combating bullying in schools. Yana Lantratova, First Deputy Head of the Duma Committee on Education, told Kommersant (A Just Russia – For Truth) that the document is planned to be submitted to parliament next week. It is assumed that, together with Ms. Lantratova, a group of deputies will do this, including, in particular, Sergey Mironov (SZRP), Nina Ostanina (KPRF), as well as Anna Kuznetsova, Pyotr Tolstoy, Sergey Neverov, Dmitry Vyatkin (all United Russia) .

According to a 2019 UNESCO study, around the world, almost one in three children between the ages of 9 and 15 experienced bullying at school at least once in the month preceding the survey, the explanatory note says. “The situation in Russia is estimated to be worse than the world average,” the authors of the bill warn. “The study indicates that 42.5% of Russian schoolchildren aged 9-15 were bullied.” Parliamentarians also refer to the poll of the agency “Mikhailov and Partners. Analytics”, according to which 52% of Russian teenagers said they faced aggression at school. At the same time, a third of the respondents spoke about psychological aggression from their peers, 26.6% – about its physical manifestations, and 22% admitted that they had encountered aggression from teachers. At the same time, only 0.5% of those who were bullied turned to the police – most prefer to share the problem only with their parents and friends.

The deputies propose to enshrine the concept of “bullying” in the law “On Education” and understand it as “systematic psychological and / or physical aggressive behavior of a group of persons or one person against another person or persons, carried out, among other things, using electronic means of communication.”

At the same time, parliamentarians propose to recognize as separate types of harassment: boycott, “exclusion of the victim of harassment from a formal or informal group”, offensive treatment, deliberate theft or damage to the victim’s belongings, cyberbullying, dissemination of defamatory information, as well as public discussion of the physical, psychological or intellectual characteristics of those who is being bullied. For the first time, such terms as “victim”, “participant”, “organizer” and “observer of bullying” will be established in the legislation.

The document, according to the authors’ plans, will form the basis for the further adoption of the State Bullying Prevention Program (SPPT) and the Uniform Bullying Prevention Standard. They should define a set of measures aimed at creating a system for preventing bullying, social adaptation of bullying participants, as well as ways to respond to it. According to Yana Lantratova, these documents must be approved by the Ministry of Education.

“This is, first of all, a framework bill – we are creating the basis for launching a comprehensive bullying prevention program in the country later,” explains MP Lantratova. According to her, the Ministry of Education, the regional authorities, experts already have their own experience in preventing bullying and dealing with its consequences. “We want to collect best practices, work with the ministry and experts to create a systematic program,” says Ms. Lantratova. The parliamentarian notes that both students who face bullying and their parents turn to her every day. Lastly, she notes, schools often offer to transfer children to another educational institution. “In addition, as a result of bullying, not only the victim suffers, but the entire team, since the instigators and witnesses adopt the new experience of destructive relationships as normal,” the explanatory note says. therefore transferring the victim to another educational institution is not an effective way to respond to bullying.”

After the approval of the unified state program, according to the plans of the authors of the bill, schools will have to adopt their local regulations for the prevention of bullying. The bill provides for the creation of specialized units within the structure of educational organizations and their branches, whose activities are aimed at reviewing cases of bullying and taking measures to prevent it, suppress and prevent new cases. Also, schools should conduct an assessment of the psychological situation in the team.

Deputies propose to register responsibility for violations in the Code of Administrative Offenses. We are talking about the appearance in the code of Art. 5.57-1 “Violation of the right to education and the rights and freedoms of educational organizations provided for by the legislation on education, carrying out educational activities.”

In particular, schools that do not adopt local acts aimed at preventing bullying face fines ranging from 50,000 to 100,000 rubles. They may face similar sanctions if they fail to take measures to prevent and respond to bullying. Deputies propose to expel pupils-violators from school or reprimand them.

The implementation of such initiatives requires a comprehensive discussion in the professional community, Vladimir Sobkin, scientific director of the Laboratory for Sociological Research in Education of the Center for the Development of Education of the Russian Academy of Education, comments on the document. “Our data shows that students from stronger social strata are more likely to openly resist bullying: from families in which parents have higher education and from high-income families,” he shares. and leadership position in the classroom. In contrast, students with low class status are more likely to avoid interacting with the victim of bullying.”

Requests for psychological work with victims of bullying are among the three most frequent categories of appeals to the psychological services of schools, says Tatyana Tikhomirova, scientific director of the Federal Resource Center for Higher Education of the Russian Academy of Education, along with the need to work with the actual aggressors and children with disabilities. However, in her opinion, it is necessary to focus efforts not on prescriptions, fines and prohibitions, but on comprehensive scientifically based work on the prevention and psychological education of teachers and teachers, schoolchildren and students, parents: “Improving psychological literacy, lowering barriers when applying for a qualified psychological assistance will contribute to the creation of a psychologically safe environment at school, college and university, where there is no place for violence and humiliation.”

The press service of the Ministry of Education told Kommersant that today there are already mass training programs for psychologists, which contain modules on managing and resolving conflicts. They also noted that in 2022, the “Week of Psychology” was held in schools for the first time “using methodological materials specially prepared by the Ministry of Education of Russia on the formation and strengthening of stress resistance in children, the development of communication skills and the formation of a favorable educational environment.”

Anna Vasilyeva