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lthough the Jakarta Education Agency has yet to oblige schools to establish a particular system to address bullying, a number of schools in the capital have established schemes to tackle violent behavior among students.

HighScope Indonesia principal Callie Mackenzie said that teachers at the school, which is located in South Jakarta, were encouraged to establish a two-way dialogue with the students to gain their trust so that whenever the students faced problems, including bullying, they could tell their teachers.

'€œWe show them that we care about them. We also tell them that we want to know what they have been through and what we can do for them. Once they trust us, they become open and can share many things, including bullying,'€ Mackenzie said.

She told The Jakarta Post that the method had encouraged one girl to tell the school that she had been bullied on social media site ask.fm. The school, however, was unable to identify the perpetrators due to limited resources.

Nonetheless, Mackenzie said the school helped the student in dealing with her trauma by encouraging her to express her anger and fear by writing a play. The school also talked to her parents to provide similar support to her at home. As a result, the girl was able to graduate from the school successfully.

Meanwhile, Kamelia Dewi, a counselor at Al-Izhar high school in South Jakarta, said that the school annually conducted anti-bullying events, like workshops and discussion forums, involving all stakeholders in school to raise awareness about bullying.

Kamelia added that the school had once dealt with a bullying case involving two boys that had been ongoing since they were in junior high school. The bully mocked the victim every day until the victim refused to go to school.

The school immediately gathered the data about the boys'€™ behavior by asking friends and teachers before calling their parents to discuss the case.

'€œBased on an agreement, we eventually met with all stakeholders, including the victim, perpetrator, and both sets of parents. We asked for their commitment to change the perpetrator'€™s behavior and heal the victim'€™s trauma,'€ Kamelia said, admitting that the school also had faced difficulties in dealing with the angry parents of victims.

According to Jakarta Education Agency head Arie Budhiman, the agency has no particular regulations that stipulate that schools in Jakarta form special teams or take measures to deal with bullying cases.

'€œNonetheless, we have been working on solving the problem through various ways. One of which is sending task forces, particularly to teachers, to identify and monitor points at which students are usually susceptible to bullying,'€ Arie said.