School forced to disclose bullying questionnaire results to parents

HYOGO — A school in Kawanishi, Hyogo Prefecture, is to break a confidentiality agreement made with students who responded to a survey about bullying.

The survey was carried out following the suicide of a 17-year-old boy, who was being called “bug” and “germ” by classmates, and had dead insects placed on his chair in class, Sankei Shimbun reported. The boy committed suicide by hanging himself at his home on Sept 2. Following his death, the boy’s school told his parents that there were no problems in his school life and that they were unaware of any bullying. The boy did not leave any written notes.

However, following his funeral, the boy’s parents discovered a mourning letter written by a classmate and addressed to their son, which revealed that he had been bullied. The parents contacted his school and were told that the school principal had also heard reports from other sources that their son had been the victim of bullying.

School authorities conducted a survey of the boy’s classmates in order to ascertain the scale of the problem. The school read portions of the survey responses to parents, but said they did not release the full documents in an attempt to protect students’ privacy.

However, parents contacted the Hyogo Board of Education and demanded full access to the documents. The school’s principal told a news conference: “I would like to reveal what information we can, according to parents’ wishes.”

A spokesperson said that information identifying individuals will be removed from the documents before they are read by parents, Sankei reported.

Following that announcement, an emergency parent-teacher meeting was held on the Tuesday night, at which the school apologized for the comments of a teacher who told students in class that if parents continued to fail to understand the school’s reasons and methods, the school would cease to operate and eventually collapse. The principal apologized for the teacher’s “inappropriate” comments.

Japan Today