Chris Abercrombie: PPTA President on a national school bullying database

It's thought more work is needed, before a national school bullying database could work.

New Zealand holds the highest level of bullying in the OECD, according to a 2024 report.

Schools are required to develop prevention and response approaches - but there's no regular data reported to the Ministry of Education.

PPTA President Chris Abercrombie told Andrew Dickens he isn't opposed to a database

He says the issue is every school has its own definition of bullying, which would need to be discussed and rectified.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Now there's been a call for national reporting systems for
bullying in schools. The Children's the Chief Children's Commissioner wants
to see regular publicly reported data made available for all
to see, but the Ministry of Education believes it should
be left up to the individual schools themselves. That's despite
a quarter of the Principles nationally saying they see physical

(00:21):
harm or property damage every day. So I'm joined now
by the PBTA president. It's Chris Abercrombie. Thank you for
getting up for us. Chris, how are you good?

Speaker 2 (00:30):
All good?

Speaker 1 (00:31):
Are you in favor of a national reporting system?

Speaker 2 (00:34):
I'm not neussarily opposed to. The issue is with two
and a half thousand south governing schools with two and
a half thousand different definitions of bullying, So until we
saw that out, you couldn't have a national database on
the issue.

Speaker 1 (00:48):
So if there is to be a national reporting system,
you want all these schools to actually coordinate the way
they do things.

Speaker 2 (00:55):
Well, they'd just have to. I mean, I'm sure if
we've got ten different people in a room, we have
ten differents of what bullying is. And so until we
get a shared understanding of what it is, until we
all know then that you couldn't have a national database.

Speaker 1 (01:09):
Okay, but if we get it sorted, would a national
database actually.

Speaker 2 (01:13):
Help well as the resourcing that came with it. I mean,
there's all good measuring a problem, understanding an issue, but
then it's the next thing to support it. There's no
nationally coordinated or very few nationally coordinated programs to support
schools to deal with bullying. Like you say, the ministry
believes it's best to schools to deal with it, and
we've got two and a half thousand different ways of

(01:34):
doing that.

Speaker 1 (01:35):
Well, do you believe, because we've got so many different
ways of reporting on it, that the bullying is actually
being underreported in New Zealand.

Speaker 2 (01:44):
I don't know to say anything about that, but I did.
What I do know is that if we do want
to seriously deal with this, and are has reported it,
and Piece has reported it, then we need to really
get some national action on this. We do have what's
called Positive Behavior for Learning program, but not all schools
are part of it, and funding has been dropping for
that for a number of years.

Speaker 1 (02:02):
So you're the president of the PPTA, would you you
could possibly knock heads together and say let's come up
with a standardized way of doing this.

Speaker 2 (02:10):
Well, I appreciate you think I can do all of that,
but we can. I mean, well you all have a
discussion about that. It was really really vital. I was
believed when I was at school, so I know how
devastating it can be for dealing with these kind of issues.
So any support that we can do to God it
and maybe the Children's Commission's call will click starut that
idea good stuff.

Speaker 1 (02:31):
Thank you, Chris abber crumby the PPTA President. For more
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