Ministers grilled by region’s youngsters
Government ministers came to the North last week to hear young people talk "straight-up" about their issues.
| If there was an easy law you could pass to say that there shall be no more bullying, we would have done it a long time ago. |
High on the agenda were concerns about bullying, drugs and alcohol and the costs of going into higher education.
In a discussion about bullying before the Str8Up! event in Newcastle, South Shields MP and school standards minister David Miliband told us there was no easy answer to the problem.
"We are talking about human nature at some level and about the way people relate to each other," he said.
"If there was an easy policy or a law that you could pass to say that there shall be no more bullying, we would have done it a long time ago."
The most important thing was that it is dealt with inside schools starting at the class teacher and stopping ultimately at the head teacher.
New teacher training, he said, included a significant part about "behaviour, discipline and maintenance of order", but young people had to report these matters to their teachers.
He didn't seem to understand that young people might not feel able to report a bullying incident to a teacher for a variety of reasons.
The event, at Kingston Park Rugby Club, Newcastle, was designed to put Government ministers in touch with young people. An invited audience put their questions to David Miliband and two other Labour MPs.
About the team
This story was produced by Philip Clark, 15, Jade Henderson and Naomi Welsh, 16, Samantha Newby, 15, and Gavin Mather, 14. It was published in the Sunday Sun.
