SS1024 Term Paper

School bullying

Tsang Tin Lam (57157665)

1. Introduction
Bullying could be defined as a person exposed regularly to negative actions
towards one or more persons. According to an international study done by the OECD In
2017, Hong Kong was evaluated as the worst for school bullying among 72 regions and
countries. This data has shed some light on the seriousness and the urgency of this issue. That
is why I have chosen this topic as my term paper topic. In this paper, school bullying would
be investigated through collected data from a local newspaper. To further support, an
theoretical approach would be used to explain the social issue. Furthermore, existing policy
and its effectiveness would be examined. To conclude, innovative solutions would be
proposed based on the theoretical approach.

2. Reason of HK01 newspaper being chosen in this paper

To have a better understanding of the current social issue situation, it is necessary
for us to build up an investigation background through data collection. To do so, HK01
newspaper is chosen for this paper. HK01 Company Limited is founded in Hong Kong in
2017, aiming to cover a wide range of reports from a variety of sources and perspectives. It
has established different sections and tags on its website, providing the most updatednews for
the general public. For instance, tags such as “school bullying” and “bullying” could be found
under every related report, which has made research much easier to be done. As HK01 has
been focusing on local issues closely, it has a relatively higher frequency of local school
bullying reports, more comprehensive and updated dates could also be retrieved.
Furthermore, HK01 featured adequate data followed by sufficient interviews or examples,
providing a more vivid and evidence-based background for every article being published.

3. Current Situation in Hong Kong

Referencing over 500,000 schoolchildren, the Programme for International
Students Assessment (PISA) has indicated that over 32% of 15-year-olds in Hong Kong
(Ling, 2017) expressed that they have been bullied several times every month. As stated in
the introduction, Hong Kong was also evaluated as the worst place for school bullying. These
dates have indicated the seriousness of the problem in Hong Kong.

Another issue will be the impact on students. According to the recent

reports published by the “Save the Children Hong Kong organization”, one in every 4
students in Hong Kong worries about being bullied or has suffered violent abuse.(Au,2021)
School bullying has extensively caused mental stress or physical harm to Hong Kong
students, which has presented the fact that it is a social issue that urgently needed to be
addressed.
 Further data are shown in a study conducted by Social Work Dr.Chan from the
Chinese University of Hong Kong, illustrating his data collected from 2016-2017, The rate of
bullying violence in the junior secondary section was over 66%, and The rate of victimization
was even indicated as 77.6%, almost 20% higher than that in Taiwan and the Mainland.
Comparing the data he collected in 2013, there were no signs of improvement. Data has
shown that current policies has low effectiveness and cannot improve the social
issue.(Kwan,2017)

4. Cause of the Current Situation in Hong Kong

There are often complex causes behind school bullying. However, ignoring the
private sector on a case-by-case basis, it is believed that Hong Kong official institutions
should bear the greatest responsibility.

4.1. Hong Kong’s approach towards school bullying

Hong Kong's approach to the school bullying issue is relatively passive
and conservative. The government adopts a School-based management approach and actively
allows local schools to handle the matters on their own, the responsibility of tackling the
issues was then shifted to schools. Nevertheless, Most schools would decide to disclose the
bullying situation in schools as they pursue it would affect the reputation of the school. They
are in a state of "refusal (public discussion)".(To, 2017) In addition, there are no
well-established notification systems, parents have no channels to communicate with the
school efficiently.Parents, as a very important component in children’s education, could not
cooperate with schools and the government closely to perform their education function.

4.2. Education in Hong Kong

According to Dr wong, an experienced education psychologist, the competitive
culture in Hong Kong has created Hotbeds of bullying. (Kwan,2017)The competitive culture
on campus is evident in the comparison of academic performance. Teachers evaluate students
based on their grades, which leads to the misconception that those with poor grades are
worthless and deserve to be bullied. To be recognized and accepted, students will distinguish
others who are different from themselves, and step down or look down on others to enhance
their self-esteem and build up their self-confidence, which gradually turns into bullying. On
the other hand, students with poor academic performance have to seek ways to rebuild their
self-confidence, thus they might become bullies without awareness.
 5. Application of theoretical approach
To have a better understanding on the issue, it is necessary for us to apply
a theoretical approach for further explanation. In this project, Structural Functionalist is
chosen for further elaboration.

5.1. Structural Functionalist

Structural Functionalist claims the concept of “Society as a whole requires
its interrelated parts/institutions work together and perform certain functions to keep the
society 'healthy'.”According to the structural-functionalist, the bullying problem could be
attributed to the dysfunction of the school and family of the children. Children build up their
values and healthy attitude following education provided by the school and parents. However,
schools provide limited value education or even false socialization. Families are not allowed
to work together well with the school to perform their education functions. They also do not
have enough knowledge on education focusing on correct values.This might leads to
bullying, the corruption of order of the society.

5.2. Deviant behavior perspective

According to Merton's Strain Theory of Deviance, “social inequality can
create situations in which people experience tension between the goals society says they
should be working toward and the legitimate means they have available to meet the goals.
The deviance is likely to happen when there is a misalignment between the cultural goals of a
society and the opportunities people must obtain them.”

Currently, Hong Kong education or school over-focus on academic results,

thus creating a highly tense learning atmosphere. Students are socialized that they could only
work hard academically to gain confidence. However, it would not be easy for all students.
Therefore, students with worse academic results may hardly follow the cultural goal and
misalign the results. As a result, students who accept the cultural goal and reject the
conventional means may seek innovative means, bullying. They could gain confidence from
bullying others.As a result, bullying becomes a social problem from deviant behavior
perspective.

Furthermore, Family factors could also illustrate how deviant behavior

perspectives have affected students' behavior. As parents gain limited support or guidelines in
educating children from recent policies, inappropriate parenting such as violence might occur.
This causes inappropriate socialization to children. They might assume that violence is a
proper way in interpersonal relationships, thus causing deviant behavior, bullying to develop.
In addition, as parents lack support, they also have no idea how to impose correct values on
education, children’s opportunities for learning correct values “conventional ways” might
also be restricted. These family factors could lead to deviant behavior, bullying to develop as
a social issue.
 6. Existing policies and services tackling the problem
In response to such severe school bullying situation, the government have
imposed several policies recently.

6.1. Increased funding and employment of school social workers

According to an Legislative Council document, the total estimated expenditure
for student guidance services in the 2020/21 school year was $492 million. Over 80% of
public schools had employed registered school social workers based on the budget. On the
other hand, the Social Welfare Department has implemented the "one school, two social
workers" arrangement in more than 460 secondary schools in Hong Kong since the 2019/20
school year. (Lau, 2021)

6.2. The School Administration Guide

The Education bureau have published the School Administration Handbook,providing
guidelines for handling and preventing bullying incidents. The School Administration
Handbook mentions that schools should handle bullying incidents from the perspective of
"education, counseling, and protection of students" and also sets out a "flowchart for schools
to handle bullying incidents", which states that schools should follow the procedures to
intervene and follow up. (Lau,2021)

7. Policy/Services analysis
Although the government claimed that its policy has imposed adequate policy
or support to local students, researchers have criticized current policies effectiveness. This
paper would further critically examine and evaluate the existing situations and the
effectiveness of the current policies of the social problem

7.1. Increase funding and hire enough social workers in schools

The Assistant Advocacy Manager of Save the Children Hong Kong, Mr. Kam
have commented that this policy should be affirmed as social workers could provide
emotional support to the student, however, bullying cases are still left unhandled. Without
setting up sufficient education programs, it is not possible to provide adequate value
education to students and thus effectively reduce bullying in schools. Bullying problem could
not be tackle permanetly.

7.2. The School Administration Guide

The School Administration Guide does provide guidelines for schools to
handle bullies. However, the guidelines are not legally binding, and teachers and schools are
not held accountable even though they may not handle the situation appropriately. Moreover,
no guidelines or education are provided to the parents, which leaves the parent out as a
bystander. The parents might not know how to educate and protect their children from the
recurrence of school bullying.While other countries, such as Taiwan and the United States
governments regularly discuss bullying issues with schools. They also incorporate elements
of "Anti-Bullying Law" into various legal provisions, as well as establishing procedures for
handling school bullying cases and including parents as stakeholders.

8. Recommendations
From the above section, loopholes are discovered in current policy.Therefore,
an innovative policy is proposed in this paper to remedy the social issue according to the
Structural Functionalist approach.

8.1. Three-step Comprehensive Anti-bullying Scheme

In response to the loopholes found in current policies and causes of the
problem investigated based on Structural Functionalist approach, a Three-step
Comprehensive Anti-bullying Scheme is proposed. The goal is to address the root causes of
each problem and policy loopholes for improvement.

8.2. Stage 1: Parent-Child Interaction Training Program

The first stage would be Parent-Child Interaction Training Program. It is designed
to extensively apply to all kindergartens in Hong Kong, targeting Parents and their children,
aiming to teach parents parenting skills. By putting participants in different daily situations.
Therapists and social workers would provide guides to the parents, educating them on how to
respond to their child's behavior properly (ImpactLaw, 2022). This could help parents
establish proper socialization to children as well as increase the ‘conventional ways’ to learn
correct values as well as proper interpersonal behaviour. Many research and applications have
already been done in the United States. Overall, preliminary data suggest that such a program
is a feasible and effective treatment with clinical implications for improving children's
behavioral impairment in a very brief period of time. (Graziano, P. A. et al, 2015) It is
believed that such program could be extensively applied to Hong Kong's schools.

8.3. Stage 2: Functional Family Therapy

The second stage would be Functional Family Therapy, targeting bullies and
their family member(s). To recognise bullies, therapists would hold regular meetings and
education sessions to educate teachers in identifying features of bullying cases. The event
aims to help bullies to identify deviance, helping them to re-built personal values as well as
educate them on the legitimate means to correctly build up confidence. The program could
help eliminate the deviant behaviour proven in Merton's Strain Theory of Deviance. By
recognizing inappropriate parenting as well as involving parents in case investigation, it is
believed that re-socialization to the student could be done efficiently. This program focuses
on solving both the underlying root problem from the family perspective and help bullies’
re-socialization.

8.4. Stage 3: Community service

The third stage would be Community service, aiming to offer the bullies an
opportunity to apply values established to community service as a part of re-socialization.
Through debriefing sections, guidance and advice could be given by therapists or social
workers. This program acts as a buffer zone for the bullies to apply what they learned from
stage 2 and ensure they could reintegrate into the community well while learning patience,
confidence and empath, reaching our ultimate aim, to put bully offenses to an end.

9. Conclusion
To conclude, School bullying still poses as an urgent and severe social issue in
Hong Kong. The major causes are illustrated by the Structural-functionalist Theory in this
paper. However, current policies still exist loopholes and could not work against the root of
the problem. It is believed that a Three-step Comprehensive Anti-bullying Scheme could
work against the current situation and provide children with a Bully-free school life.
(2166 words)
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