During a meeting at the Committee on Culture, Communication, Youth, and Sports, Margarida Balseiro Lopes explained that the group includes a “personality of recognised merit” and representatives from the Directorates General of Education and Schools and the offices of the Ministries of Youth and Education.
This group will “study the phenomenon”, propose a “national campaign on the devastating effects of bullying” and propose the creation of “materials for all those involved in the school environment, guides for technicians and teachers and infographics for students”, as well as “concrete recommendations for the next school year” and a proposal for an “effective reporting mechanism”, the minister told the MPs.
In statements to Lusa, the minister explained that, by December, the group should “prepare a national campaign to combat and prevent bullying”, create “a guide from an operational point of view for operational assistants to know how to act” in these cases, a guide for teachers and information for students, so that they “understand whether they are potential victims of bullying, but also the colleagues around them”.
An infographic document will also be created on “what bullying is, what they should do, who they should talk to. This aspect is very important”, explained the minister.
“Another task of this group will be to propose a reporting channel for these types of situations” and “an inquiry” will also be carried out to “diagnose the current situation”, said Balseiro Lopes.
The group will also “listen to experts and entities related to the topic”, in order to gather other contributions, she added, giving the example of the security forces – which have the Escola Segura project – or experts in online bullying.
The topic is “very important” and “we have to really address the problem in an integrated manner” so that schools can then actually implement the plan to combat bullying, said Margarida Balseiro Lopes.
Stabbing
The announcement comes following an incident which resulted in a student stabbing classmates at a school in Azambuja.
The student at Azambuja primary school who stabbed six classmates on Tuesday has been preventively suspended, the Ministry of Education revealed, indicating that the school's management has initiated disciplinary proceedings.
The Ministry of Education, Science and Innovation reported that the management of the Azambuja Primary School 1, 2 and 3 groups, in the district of Lisbon, “initiated disciplinary proceedings and determined the preventive suspension of the student” who attacked his classmates.
In this context, the Ministry of Education, led by Fernando Alexandre, also said that it is monitoring the evolution of the clinical situation of the students who are hospitalised, as well as of the student who committed the attacks.
Lusa asked whether the student who attacked six classmates would be transferred to another school, considering the impact the incident had on the school community in Azambuja and whether he was a victim of bullying, but the Education Department did not provide any additional information.
On Tuesday afternoon, at the Azambuja elementary school, a 12-year-old student stabbed six classmates, aged between 12 and 14, with one of them, a girl, being left in a serious condition.
The student responsible for the attack “was arrested in flagrante delicto” and taken to a hospital “for psychological evaluation”, a police source told Lusa.
After the crime, the student was held in a classroom and was guarded by members of the GNR until he was questioned by the Judicial Police, who also carried out forensic examinations at the scene.
Despite having been arrested (as other sources familiar with the case also told Lusa), the minor is not facing criminal charges, as he is under 16 years old.
Portuguese law provides that an educational guardianship inquiry may be opened when acts classified as a crime are committed by minors between the ages of 12 and 16.
When asked about the school record of the 12-year-old student responsible for the attack on his classmates, the mayor of Azambuja indicated that, according to information from the headmistress of the school who was his teacher last year, “he was a student like the others, he played games […], everything was perfectly normal, so nothing would have led to him having taken such an attitude”.
Silvino Lúcio rejected the idea that the student was a victim of bullying at school and stressed that the reasons that led to this aggression “are unknown at this time”, hoping that the investigation will be able to find out what motivated it.