Text-bully watch on schools

Schools will be held to account over their plans to tackle text bullying in a fresh bid to stamp out cyber abuse.

But there will be no blanket ban on cellphones.

Education Minister Steve Maharey said that from next term the Education Review Office would report on schools' anti-bullying methods, including strategies to prevent text bullying, as part of the review process.

It comes after the death of Putaruru College schoolgirl Alex Teka, 12, who had been the victim of abusive emails and text messages. She was found dead six weeks ago, the day before she was to start the school year.

The tragedy prompted Mr Maharey to call for a report into the growing cyber problems among schoolchildren.

The report revealed that New Zealand children report higher levels of bullying than those in comparable countries. It said 19 per cent of 13-year-olds and 32 per cent of 9-year-olds complained of low levels of safety, compared with international averages of 15 per cent and 23 per cent.

Mr Maharey said the figures reflected the seriousness of the issue and reinforced the need to push on with initiatives to deal with it.

But he ruled out a blanket ban on cellphones in schools, saying it was up to schools to set boundaries around mobile phone use to suit their individual needs. The ERO would help schools to come up with consistent policies and guidelines.

"I want to send a clear message that bullying in any form is not acceptable and will not be tolerated in our schools or communities."

Alex's mother, Deanne Teka, welcomed the moves but remained concerned at how parents could combat text bullying outside school hours.

"I don't think banning phones is the answer. But I'd like to know how we can support parents to make sure they have supervision of phones. It's outside school hours that worries me."

The minister also signalled more initiatives to deal with poor discipline. He said he was exploring options through this year's Budget to strengthen existing programmes and introduce new ones.

"Establishing clear boundaries for behaviour in schools will be a key priority over the next three years."

The report also showed the rapid rise of text bullying. Cyber safety group NetSafe last year took 750 calls about the problem, representing 20 per cent of all calls. From October to December, 30 per cent of those were referred to police.

The organisation is meeting Telecom, Vodafone and police next week to update policies and procedures.

Mr Maharey said the report showed there was a lot of work being done in schools to deal with the problem, and several outside agencies offered help and support to bullied students and their parents.

He emphasised that parents and communities had a large part to play in dealing with text bullying.

Schools spoken to by the Herald this week have complained that much of the text abuse happens outside school time.

3500 COMPLAINTS EVERY MONTH

About 3500 people complain to Vodafone and Telecom about cyber nuisance, intimidation and bullying every month. Telecom, with a customer base of about 1.7 million, said it received about 3000 complaints every month, while Vodafone, with 2 million customers, deals with about 400 complaints a month.

Telecom issues an average of 12 warnings per day. Barring a customer is "very rare" because the warnings usually proved effective, said company spokesman Phil Love.

To be reconnected people have to write a letter and sign a statement promising not to indulge in that kind of behaviour again. There are about six specific text bullying complaints a week.

Leigh Owens from Vodafone said the company had received 136 complaints in the past seven days.

A quarter of those could not be dealt with because the complainant had replied and Vodafone specifies people should not reply so its investigators can establish a pattern of abuse.

In 23 of those cases, the complainant was found to be behaving the same as or worse than the person they complained about.

Eight people were banned from the network because of the seriousness of the abuse with referral to the police a possibility.

The rest of the complaints were found to be invalid or not legitimate.