Like any school, there are incidents of bullying at Summerhill; but unlike other schools, staff or pupils, can bring-up a case against anybody else in the school meeting. Thus, we are all answerable to the whole community. Our ombudsmen and self-government meetings ensure that everybody in the school has a voice and can have conflicts resolved or perpetrators dealt with by the community. The Summerhill system tends to brings things into the open so bullying is confronted in the early stages. The typical cases we see in our school meetings would normally be termed as fairly minor harassment or low level bullying on other schools – we rarely get cases of really spiteful bullying.