My Lords, I will raise some reservations that I have about Amendments 501 and 502E, on bullying in schools, and Amendment 464, on the reporting of racism or faith-based bullying.

Bullying is a label that has been subject to the phenomena of concept creep. Bullying has now expanded enormously. It is an elastic term and so a wide range of behaviours can be described as bullying. I fear that it is becoming a vehicle to encourage pupils to lack resilience —a point was just raised about how we deal with the issue of resilience. I have written about this extensively. For now, I note that, via anti-bullying initiatives in schools already, pupils are taught that words hurt and damage, that words can become interchangeable with violence, and that name-calling is on a par with physical intimidation. Inevitably, that can lead the young to believe that speech is violence. I think all of us can acknowledge that that is a problem at the moment, with people who say that speech is violence then feeling able to use violence to deal with speech they dislike—a very current issue.

It is also the case that harm can be subjectively defined as psychological, not physical harm. We know that many of the problems that we have—for example, on university campuses—happen when students arriving from school feel that it is appropriate to no-platform speakers whose views they consider to be psychologically harmful and interchangeable with violence. When words and speech are posited as the equivalent to physical force, that creates problems, and we should at least consider that. It is the case that the accusation of bullying can be weaponised—and regularly is, by the young pointing their fingers at each other for bullying.

I urge caution about the further institutionalisation of anti-bullying initiatives in schools. We should at least look at this with a bit more critical thinking. We have to look at the detail of the schemes that are being put forward. Not all of them are the same or of the same quality. Just because they use the words “anti-bullying”, we should not just give them the nod but should think about it.

From my own experience, I remember when a young family member was hysterically crying because she was being so badly bullied at school. You can imagine how terrified we all were—we had visions of her having her head kicked in or something awful. She would not tell us what had happened. We eventually found out she had not been invited by her two friends to the pictures on a Friday evening. I reassured her that she was not being bullied and that she was not to worry. She brought back the school’s anti-bullying policy, which had the words “Exclusion from friendship group: a very serious form of bullying”, and said that I was wrong and she was right. By the way, she made up with her friends.

On Amendment 464, on the recording and reporting of racist or faith-based bullying in schools, I worry about the real danger of treating young children as would-be racists. We have to think very carefully about this. The contribution of the noble Baroness, Lady Verma, was incredibly interesting. At the very least, it showed how complicated this is. It is not as straightforward as just saying that we have got to fight racism in schools and that we have to report racist incidents. Young children in particular are unencumbered by adult fixations on race, and I worry about the danger of mislabelling pupils and so on.

There was an interesting report, film and book, written by researcher Adrian Hart, on this very topic a few years ago. One of the things he noted was that a reporting regime can create a self-fulfilling prophecy, with a growing list of incidents being written down as evidence that there is racism. One of the reasons why that happened was that schools were getting in trouble because they did not have enough incidents of racism written down and therefore they were seen to be ignoring racism, so they were literally going around hunting the racism to add to the list to prove how diligent they were being.

I note that children can behave cruelly; often they fall out a lot and they call each other names. I am not trying to say that it is all an enjoyable time. But there is a danger of seeing the sometimes crass language that children use as racist. The fact that the teachers who reported a child wearing a union jack dress to school had recently been on a racial literacy course is an indication of the fact that maybe things are not all so well.

In that sense, anti-racism education is contentious. Increasing numbers of schools deploy anti-racist strategies and have adopted uncritically, for example, critical race theory. They argue that a colour-blind approach—that is, not focusing on skin colour—is itself racist. They parrot the line that there is white privilege. For many young white children, that can be guilt-inducing. In other words, it is a dangerously politicised area and we should at least consider that.

I broadly support the group of amendments of the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, which importantly suggest that there should be reports on the impact of the behaviour of school children on teacher recruitment and educational outcomes. I said at Second Reading that behaviour is a hugely challenging issue in schools at present that is not given much attention. I hope that we can tackle that.

One problem we face is a cultural assault on discipline, per se. Those who advocate discipline in schools can be described as authoritarian or as enjoying meting out cruel punishments on pupils, and can be accused of bullying children. The term is used regularly by those who argue for discipline in schools. Even as I say “discipline”, I feel a frisson, with people thinking that I mean get out the stick. I simply mean adult authority. The truth is that adult authority is under attack in many ways. That is why it is so important that we have Amendment 502YV, on the presumption against the reinstatement of children engaging in extremely serious behaviour, and Amendment 502YYA, on the right to exclude. Teachers need to have those tools in their educational toolbox. It is only fair on pupils that they know there are lines that they cannot cross. Adult authority in schools is in crisis and we should do everything we can to bolster it, not undermine it.