Bullying in schools is,

if the media is to be believed, worse than ever. The media also places a lot of the blame on social media. Whether that is true or not I don't know.  
There has also been a government initiated "Safe Schools" program which was supposed to stop the bullying of children who  have different sexual preferences and another program to stop the bullying of children who are intellectually, psychologically or physically different.
I doubt they work. In some instances they may even exacerbate the problems.
With an election coming up the current opposition has announced plans to scrap the Safe Schools program. It's been controversial from the start. There have been claims that there is a hidden agenda in the program. Certainly some of the exercises which students have been required to participate in are not what I would want my children to be part of.
I wonder what the Senior Cat would have done as the head of a school. He would have been required to have the program in his school. He would not have liked the tone of it. I can't think of a single teacher who taught me who would have been comfortable teaching it.  I also know many other current teachers who are not comfortable about it.
It's gone too far. Asking children or adolescents to "role play" something as intimate and personal as "different sexuality" is not like asking them to imagine the loss of sight or hearing or giving them a book written in a different alphabet and asking them to try and understand what it is like when the letters on the page are meaningless.  Issues of sexual intimacy have no place in the school classroom. 
     "It's their business," MsW informed me when we talked about it last year. Her friend and her friend's mother were there as well and they agreed. It was her friend's mother who had asked the question about whether we thought it was appropriate. The school had asked for feedback about whether it should be taught and, if it was to be taught, how it should be taught.  Parents voted against it. The school's deputy, who was responsible for asking, later told me that only five parents felt it should be taught. There were several hundred parents involved.
There are anti-bullying measures in place in Ms W's school. Ms W and her friends tell me that there is very little bullying at school. There is some of course - no school is entirely free of it - but the girls tend to deal with it themselves - mostly  by publicly shaming the perpetrator. 
It has probably come about because most of them have been at the same school all their school lives and the school has a reputation for  insisting on good manners, very good manners. Parents are not just encouraged but expected to back the school in this. When their child is enrolled they sign an agreement about these things.
The Senior Cat would have liked the same sort of agreement from parents in the schools for which he was responsible. I know his view is that parents are primarily responsible for the way in which children are taught to behave. The school's job is to reinforce acceptable social behaviour rather than teach it from the start.
I know not everyone will agree but I still feel that if good manners and respect for others is taught at home and reinforced at school then "differences" of any sort will be much less of an issue.  
I was bullied at school and there was nothing I could do about it because my parents worked in the same place. Simple good manners would have prevented most of it. It had a profound impact on me and it still makes me wary. I tend not to trust people but Middle Cat also told me the other day, "You never stick up for yourself."  More than once Ms W has looked at me and said severely of someone who has upset me, "You should tell them" .
Does that work?
I'd like to see the "Safe Schools" program replaced by a program which emphasised respect for others.