School issues today by Council Member 2 – Timothy Joseph

Bullying

The biggest issue young people face today is bullying. People are continuously singled out and laughed at for looking, dressing, acting or for thinking differently to the others i.e religious views. Bullying is a widespread issue, affecting countless children in primary and secondary schools nationally, whilst it is reported it has been reduced significantly in recent years as it is such a big case numbers may seem to be falling but in fact it is still going on undetected and un-deterred. Bullies are now much cleverer they no longer target whilst on school premises, instead they target their victims targeted on the way and the way home from school by groups of children. So why do they do it? I suppose they don’t feel excepted unless they pick on someone to try and hide their own deep down pain of feeling neglect in some other form.

Peer pressure to smoke

In my secondary school the teachers deliberately divide themselves on the yard away from the smokers because they are more intimidated of telling them off as they know most of them don’t actually care. The pressure is actually then passed on to the children who are around that area to start to smoke, being called names such as ‘puff’ and ‘wimp’ for not joining them. Silly really, but I think it could easily be avoided if their was a higher staff presence in those particular areas. By teachers and dinner ladies consulting those involved at least it wouldn’t make anyone else in that area feel pressured into trying it.

Pressure

For me pressure is one of the biggest things in schools which are turning children against the education system. Mainly because basically every day we are told by members of staff that we can’t relax because we have exams. We are told this everyday and it makes school feel dull and boring being told the same news that we have tests to do. Never mentioning the fact that if you don’t do well in them you will properly not get a good job which means you will not have a lot of money.