New initiatives to address bullying: Presentation of the pilot programme of the Viennese Social Competence (ViSC)

New initiatives to address bullying: Presentation of the pilot programme of the Viennese Social Competence (ViSC)

Archangelos High School, Nicosia

Monday 06/23/2014, at 9.30-10.30

Bullying is a serious problem that has negative consequences not only to the children but for everyone involved in a school. It can affects the school climate, creating insecurity and low learning motivation. The Viennese Social Competence Program (ViSC), has given very positive results in terms of the solution of the problem in three pilot High Schools in Cyprus, the Archangelos, Petrakis Kyprianou and St. Paul High Schools. ViSC is a successful Austrian prevention, intervention programs those developments social and intercultural skills of children with the main targets being, reducing violence, bullying and victimization in schools. The head of the program in Cyprus is Dr. Olga Solomon-Koundouri of the Neapolis University in Cyprus. She together with directors and teachers of schools that implemented the pilot program ViSC and Dr Costas Kadis of the Minister of Education and Culture and other officials presented the results. The presentation took place at Archangel High School, Monday 06/23/2014.

The experience of the directors and teachers of the three schools who have applied, for two years, the programme has been very positive. They reported that thanks to the guide to handle bullying incidents they have managed not only to stop the occurrences, but also to help the victims and perpetrators to use alternative healthy behaviour. The lessons of social and intercultural skills, was also very useful because lead all children to identify and stop the violence. The Minister of Education Dr. Costas Kadis congratulated those involved in the piloting programs and proclaimed his interest to seriously discuss the extension of the program to other schools.