There is a lot of work still to be done

There is a lot of work still to be done.”Professor Smith’s findings were given a cautious welcome by the children’s safety charity Kidscape, which receives 16,000 calls a year from concerned parents. “Some anti-bullying policies are really taking hold, but where it’s bad, it’s still very, very bad,” said Kidscape’s director Michelle Elliott.. But even this is better than 10 years ago, when Professor Smith found that half of the children who were bullied kept it to themselves.”The fact that that figure has fallen to 30 per cent underlines the progress that has been made, but we must not be complacent. Entitled What Good Schools Can Do About Bullying, his study will be published in May.Name-calling and teasing were overwhelmingly the main type of bullying. Physical violence against the children accounted for just over a quarter of all reports, with boys twice as likely as girls to be kicked, shoved or threatened.Professor Smith found that one in seven of all victims suffered racist taunts Disturbingly, nearly a third of all the victims told no one.

Now it is comparable with Norway and Japan, where bullying hits 10 per cent of children, and ahead of the Netherlands where 14 per cent of teenagers are affected.Professor Smith’s research was part of an international programme looking into the extent of bullying and was funded by the Japanese Ministry of Education. But last year, that figure had fallen to around 12 in 100.”This also marks significant progress in relation to other industrialised nations. Ten years ago, Britain had roughly twice as much bullying as Norway. He discovered that only 12.2 per cent of pupils were bullied while the percentage of bullies had shrunk to 2.9 per cent.Professor Smith said: “At their most conservative, the figures show that 13 out of every 100 children reported that they had been bullied in 1990. He found that the proportion of pupils suffering regularly at the hands of bullies ranged from 16 per cent in West Yorkshire to 13.1 per cent in Sheffield.Nearly seven per cent of the pupils had actually carried out the bullying.Last year he repeated the exercise, questioning 2,300 pupils from across England. The number of perpetrators has also more than halved, shrinking from 560,000 to 240,000 over the same period.The research, the first substantial study to show bullying on the decrease, was carried out by Professor Peter Smith of Goldsmith’s College, London.He told the IoS that there has been a “sea change” in the way the issue is tackled in British schools and that the findings are a vindication of a tough anti-bullying stance and of such initiatives as peer-counselling, where students are encouraged to confide in their fellow pupils.Back in 1990, Professor Smith, a psychologist, conducted interviews with 7,000 Yorkshire children aged between 10 and 16. Playground bullying, one of the most emotive problems to dog schools in recent years, is on the decline, according to new research obtained by the Independent on Sunday.

Playground bullying, one of the most emotive problems to dog schools in recent years, is on the decline, according to new research obtained by the Independent on Sunday.
A decade of anti-bullying initiatives has led to the first recorded drop in both the number of victims and the number of young bullies.The war on violence and name-calling has been so successful that Britain is no longer the bullying capital of Europe, registering major improvements in comparison with its continental neighbours.The research, an international study sponsored by Unesco, shows that there has been a decline of at least 72,000 in the number of English teenagers who say they have been bullied, compared with 10 years ago. Opera directors and managers have to try to respond to audience needs.”Video screens have been used before to bring opera from the Royal Opera House to the public standing outside in Covent Garden. But less obtrusive technology might also help.Just as art galleries offered headsets with a spoken commentary, said Mr Payne, an opera audience might be helped by hand-held screens running the libretto in illuminated text.”I’m very suspicious of over-sophisticated equipment as a substitute for the inventiveness of really creative directors and designers, but I think one should use technology to one’s advantage,” he said.ENO began thinking about what could be done after receiving complaints about its policy of not providing surtitles.. No extra fees would be necessary.”Mr Payne said the problem of helping the more distant members of the audience to enjoy a performance better was not something ENO was going to be able to solve this year If video screens would help, that might be one solution.

Although in the past the Musicians’ Union has raised objections to such relays, an MU spokesman said the union was much more pragmatic today: “If there’s no broadcast or recording, we don’t think there would be any problem. A remarkable number from various backgrounds do make that choice, but it would be surprising if the audiences of the next decade, let alone the next century, are content with the mixture that was thought right 50 or 20 years ago. Large, stadium-style video screens could be used to relay opera action to the theatre “gods” under radical plans to improve the musical experience.
English National Opera executives have raised the possibility of screens to improve the viewing for opera-lovers in the cheap seats at the top of their 2,358-seat auditorium – the largest in London.The idea, which originated in general director Nicholas Payne’s experience of Premiership football, is one of a string of suggestions designed to shake up the image of opera.Mr Payne believes that when potential audiences are being constantly bombarded with hi-tech-enhanced audio and visual images, the experience of opera has to be impressive to compete.He said: “There is a great awareness today that opera is part of the leisure choice. Awards include Film-makers’ Trophy at Sundance Film Festival and the New York Critics’ Circle. 1998 : Your Friends and Neighbours , a film about infidelity, based on his play Lepers His Mormon wife reportedly displeased. 2000 : Trilogy of explosive one-act plays, Bash: Latterday Plays , opens in London..

Large, stadium-style video screens could be used to relay opera action to the theatre “gods” under radical plans to improve the musical experience. Educated Brigham Young, Kansas and New York universities, where he studied theatre and staged a series of transgressive plays Admits to being an “improbable Mormon” 1997 : Debut film, In the Company of Men Shot on $25,000, it grosses over $5m. I asked if the film was LaButian, and, with typical LaButian ambivalence, he answered, “Yes – and no.” He did see some thematic connections with his plays and his tougher work. “There is a series of mediocre-to-bad men and a woman scrambling to save themselves,” he said. With LaBute, one way or another, salvation remains the issue.© John Lahr 1999.