Anti-Bullying Week 2025

This Head’s Journal entry is written by Mrs Jill Pargeter, our Assistant Headteacher with responsibility for Pupil Wellbeing and our Designated Safeguarding Lead, and outlines our consistent practical and pragmatic approach to Anti-bullying.

This week, Cransley school is observing Anti-Bullying Week 2025 as we do every year.

We believe that tackling bullying effectively requires a partnership between home and school, and we want to share the key concepts we discuss regularly and frequently with our pupils.

Defining Bullying

To effectively address bullying, it is vital that we all use a common definition. The Anti-Bullying Alliance (ABA) defines bullying as: "The repetitive, intentional hurting of one person or group by another person or group, where the relationship involves an imbalance of power".

The are several critical elements of this behaviour:

• It must be repetitive.

• It must be intentional.

• It must be hurtful.

• It must involve an imbalance of power.

Furthermore, bullying can take many forms: it can be physical, verbal, or psychological, and importantly, it can happen face-to-face or online.

Historically, when incidents occurred, the traditional focus of behaviour management was on the two individuals involved—the "Victim" and the "Bully"—with the goal being to find out what happened and sort it out.

However, our current approach, as discussed with pupils, reframes bullying as a group behaviour. This model acknowledges that many individuals contribute to or enable bullying behaviour, not just the two primary participants.

The Roles in Group Bullying Dynamics

We have used this group dynamic model to help pupils understand their own potential influence on social situations. The roles involved in bullying behaviour include:

1. The Target: This is the person who is being bullied, or the person at whom the bullying is aimed.

2. The Ringleader (Bully): This individual is responsible for starting and leading the bullying, though they are not always the person 'doing' the bullying themselves.

3. Assistant(s): These are pupils who become actively involved in 'doing' the bullying.

4. Reinforcer(s): These individuals support bullying. This support might be subtle, such as laughing or encouraging other people to 'collude' with what is going on.

5. Outsider(s): Outsiders are those who ignore any bullying and simply do not want to get involved.

6. Defender(s): Defenders are key to breaking the cycle of bullying. They are pupils who stand up for someone being bullied because they know the behaviour is wrong. A Defender feels confident enough to do something about the situation, and this crucial step might involve reporting the problem to someone trusted, ie. talking to an adult in school.

Working Together

By identifying these different roles, we empower pupils to recognise how their own actions and inactions can either reinforce negative behaviour or, crucially, enable them to step forward as a Defender.

Our approach is to facilitate pupils in developing the skills and foresight to identify when negative actions are taking place and act early, and individually have the strength of character to call out poor conduct as not being acceptable.

We recognise that restorative practice systems are vital, when correctly timed and with the willing participation of the group, to ensure that we recognise mistakes, understand the hurt that has been caused and restore or nurture relationships as newly positioned Defenders.

It is also recognised by the school that invariably the Ringleader as well as the others within the group, as well as the Target, require careful pastoral support.  Such behaviours are indicative of underlying contributing issues - often a lack of self confidence, or learned and replicated behaviours observed in others - and it is important that we isolate the reasons for such choices.

The child - remember, they are still children - and the family then have a choice: we will endeavour to support and educate, but only if the child and the family have accepted the need to change the behaviour.

We encourage you to discuss these concepts with your child at home and reinforce Cransley school's commitment to preventing all forms of repetitive, intentional, and hurtful behaviour. If your child is concerned about bullying, whether they are the Target, a Defender, or an Outsider, or even if they, or you, recognise themselves as a Ringleader, please ensure they know to speak to a trusted adult at home or in school.

Our united effort is the most powerful tool we have in ensuring a safe environment for all pupils.

Mrs Jill Pargeter

AHT Wellbeing and DSL

Harvest: From Seed to Soup

Around this time, every Primary School in the land turns to its beleaguered external Music Teacher (or, if nothing else, that poor naive young teacher who won the Christmas Party Karaoke rendition and has now been named Music Coordinator) to prepare for the Harvest festival.  

They find the plastic box, unopened over the previous 11 months, and filled with year-old crepe paper autumn leaves, mouldy conkers, and a rather interesting fungus smell, and dig out the battered photocopy of the lyrics to ‘We plough the fields and scatter’ and ‘Cauliflowers fluffy’ ready to remind children, many of whom have only been alive for five cycles of the seasons, that fruit and veg can only be picked during certain months, and they should be bloomin’ thankful for it.

(Although who they are thanking is rather questionable.  For most, it’s probably the lady in Lidl, or the team in Tescos).

There may be the chance that you are reading this and not a parent at Cransley.  Maybe, you may have sat through a church service, assembly or similar, heard the usual songs, poetry recitals (many of which you sang as a child yourself), and watched Reception dressed up as yawning tomatoes, wondering whether it’s worth taking two hours of your working day to watch your darling child see how far they can stick some straw up their nose.

We do things slightly differently at Cransley. (I do love those words).

So, the Junior School staff meeting mid-September probably went like this: 

“Hmm. That’s what everyone else does. What can we do better?” (Practically the Junior School’s mission statement.)

“Is the tractor still around?  Last I saw it was coughing away in the front field.”

“I’ll have a chat.  Greame can fit it in those doors.  Always fun to watch.”

“Let’s put twinkly lights on it this time. And use it to display our donation to WODAC?”

“Great idea.  Food?”

“Soup and rolls.  Soup entirely made from vegetables they have grown themselves from seed on the farm.  Seed to Soup. Bread rolls from Bidvest.”

“Excellent.  Shame about the rolls.  Next year maybe.  Year 6 can serve our parents.  Let’s get them all mixed up so they can chat with new parents from other year groups in the Gym.  Big long tables, like in Hogwarts.”

“Well, let’s get the parents to do some hard labour beforehand.  Build their appetite.  Dungarees not yoga pants;  Put those Barbour coats and Hunter wellies to some proper use.  No Burbury and Gucci here!”  

“Too right.  Let’s get them ploughing the field alleys and scattering those good seeds.”

“Sounds like a song to me…”

“A bit of hard labour won’t harm them.  Crack on even if it's raining?”

“Of course! Better and better.  Next?  Some vital existential meaning? What do our kids and their parents need to know?”

“We have to get some serious messages across… who wants to go first?” 

“Climate change for us.” 

“Use of pesticides and herbicides, here” 

“Mycology for Year 2!”

“Seriously?”

“Yep. They loved it last year, investigates their biochemical properties, and how humans use them, while also examining their role in medicine, industry, and ecology. I bet every Year 3 could tell their oysters from their giant puffballs.” 

“I’ll do the water cycle, if you are going to do how we use our labs to test the soil for the best growth.”

“Condensation and stuff?”

“Much better. Year 1 have been identifying cloud types with special viewers and have learned to predict what the weather will do over the coming hours. We could teach the parents.”

“Magic.  Science, speaking and listening, maths, personal development, confidence and enterprise, wider understanding of the world, ecology, geography, sense of community.  Awesome.  Reception?”

“Can we dress up and sing a song?”

“Always.  It wouldn’t be a Harvest Festival without it.”

Autumn Open Day: No scripts. We trust them.

Journal Entry:

Is the Autumn Open Day well-marketing, well-planned and well-executed?

Were guests made to feel welcome and know how to come back?

Were our pupils kind, effective and transparent?

In our last marketing survey, most parents looked at 2-3 schools before choosing Cransley, and it is expected that anyone within our catchment area would have popped to The Grange, amongst others, on recent weekends, and rightly so.

The weather hasn’t helped any of us hoping to hold a sunny Autumnal event, but it's the warmth inside that counts, and I’d like to think that was very evident on Saturday, and I want to thank every one of the lovely guests and families who braved the elements and joined us this weekend. 

A good open day will inevitably showcase the learning environment and resources available, even on a wet and windy day, but ultimately it isn’t what persuades a family to return for another visit.  

It isn’t the headteacher or his team welcoming guests as they arrive, or the Chair of Governors sharing a cookie or two.

It isn’t the superb staff sharing their expertise and glowing promotion for their subject or form.

It isn’t Chef Ed's wonderful demonstration of his kitchen, or even the incredible Lego model of the school and Estate (thank you so much, Sam K (Y10)).

It is always the pupils.  Their openness, thoughtfulness and pride.

Parents so often say that they want their child to become the pupil that is showing them around the school.

Where else would a pupil guiding a nervous child around the school go into each room to describe to their little guest what was inside and how busy the room was, before they entered?

Where else would a child take over the tour of another pupil because their friend isn’t feeling well?

Where else would a pupil happily take a late-comer around their school, even when they are sacrificing a netball fixture. Each of these were seen on Saturday.

Our children are not given a marketing script or words and phrases they must say.  We trust them enough to be clear and transparent about life at Cransley, and indeed we trust you as guests to recognise when a child is trying to remember what they have been told to say by a marketing executive.

We hope that many of our families will return to us for our parent guided tours and pupil enrichment days in November, and if nothing else share experiences with friends and families.  If you were a new visitor to the school, do let us know if you enjoyed the event or how we can make ours even better.

For those who missed the chance to visit, please give us a call.  We can try our best to accommodate a visit in the coming weeks.

A huge thank you to our families for arranging their weekend obligations, fixtures, shopping trips, gym visits and more to offer use to us of their children. 

The success of our Open days are crucial to the effective development of any independent school. We currently have just over 250 pupils, 90 in the Juniors, 162 in the Seniors, and are on track to slowly grow over the course of the year, with a bumper field of candidates applying for places in Year 6 and 7 for September 2026.