QUESTION: Our child has become very anxious lately. After probing and encouragement from both of us, he divulged that he is being bullied at school. We have made a number of representations to the principal and class teacher, who seemed sympathetic and promised to investigate, but the problem is unresolved. Do we have any rights in this situation?

ANSWER: Your local school has a legal obligation to act in locus parentis and ensure your child does not become the target of bullying. In September 2013 the Department of Education stipulated that every school implement anti-bullying procedures. But having a policy in place and making it a reality are very different things.

Some schools deal with bullying incidents as they arise, which seems to be the case according to the details in your letter. A more effective approach, which you could encourage your principal and board of management to adopt, is an active anti-bullying strategy through the school year. You could write formally to the principal, as secretary of the board, suggesting this, or speak to your parents’ representatives on the board.

Bullying occurs among human beings in all social situations. Typically, instigators of bullying remain in the background, using others under their sway to do the physical, online or verbal bullying.

Individuals in the group may fear “ratting” on the bully, for fear of drawing retribution on their own head, even if remaining silent results in the bullying continuing. So an investigation by a principal or teacher of a specific bullying incident may not uncover what is really going on, and could make matters worse. The bullying often transfers either to social media or to outside school.

The key to an effective anti-bullying policy is to withdraw the oxygen of indifference and ignorance of the vast majority of children who are neither bullying nor being bullied, on which all such activity is dependent. This only happens with ongoing engagement with an anti-bullying strategy by all teachers and other adults working in schools.

Central to such a policy is a programme of anti-bullying lessons in all classes over a specific week. Age-appropriate lessons explore the effects of bullying on everyone in a group. Children are often encouraged to make posters to display in the school during anti-bullying week.

There are also external groups that visit schools to dramatise the effect of bullying, which can be more effective than a class-based lesson.

Finally, an effective mechanism at the end of such a programme is to place posters centrally in the school so that all students and adults can sign a pledge to desist from bullying activity.

These posters can be left up through the rest of the year to reinforce the message that bullying is always the wrong option. In my experience in 40 years as a teacher, when children become aware of the damaging effects of bullying, they tend to use peer pressure to stop it from happening.

• Email education expert Brian Mooney with your query: askbrian@irishtimes.com