Reporting incidents of Bullying

Please note: the Sentinel database will only be active until the end of March 2019.  There is no legal obligation for schools to inform the LA or any external agency of bullying incidents, only to keep their own records.  For further information, see guidance from the DfE below:

• The Department for Education (DfE) has produced guidance for all schools, including academies and free schools, which outlines its duties towards preventing and tackling bullying in schools:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/preventing-and-tackling-bullying  

• The Education Act 2002 Section 175 placed a legal duty on maintained schools and Local Authorities to safeguard and promote the welfare of children.
• Some incidents of bullying may also be a child protection issue. A bullying incident should be addressed as a child protection issue under the Children Act 1989 when there is ‘reasonable cause to suspect that a child is suffering, or is likely to suffer, significant harm. These concerns must be reported to the member of staff in school responsible for child protection and then reported to the local authority’s children’s social services.

It is possible to record incidents on CPOMS or on SIMS. DfE guidance states that Staff should develop a consistent approach to monitoring bullying incidents in their school and evaluating whether their approach is effective. For some schools, that will mean recording incidents so that they can monitor incident numbers and identify where bullying is recurring between the same pupils. Others do not want to keep written records. We want schools to exercise their own judgment as to what will work best for their pupils.

The Local Authority will no longer be requesting that schools to submit this data to us, furthermore,  we will not collate this information from March 2019.