"Bullying is horrible and extremely detrimental. But stand-downs are not really the answer," he said.
"The key thing is reporting when it happens, naming names, and involving the parents of the victims and the bullies, the community, and ourselves as a school in finding solutions," he said.
Mr Miles said the school had definite protocols to combat bullying and guidelines were available for staff.
Chanel College offered the police-led Kia Kaha programme to Year 7 to Year 9 pupils and conducted an annual survey, which was sometimes held twice a year, to gain feedback from pupils on bullying and other issues in their school lives.
Counsellors who were independent of the school were available for victims and perpetrators and those remedies were considered before a stand down was enforced, he said.
"Because of our size, bullies can't hide long and once we know who they are, it's vital to keep a dialogue going with their parents and families, to go down through the layers of the problem to deal with it properly."
Mr Miles said the victims of bullying could report their attackers to any school staff member and the parents or guardians of victims could report incidences to teachers, deans or himself.
Kuranui College principal Geoff Shepherd said some of his pupils had been referred to agencies outside the school, but not for bullying.
There had been some isolated incidences of bullying that had been dealt with through a "no-blame" approach, where the bully agrees to change their behaviour. "We do access some outside agencies although we have our own guidance counsellor who deals with most of those situations and the no-blame approach has been successful in the majority of cases."
Makoura College principal Tom Hullena said outside agencies were used when other remedies had failed to resolve "interpersonal, personal or social" conflicts that also included bullying.
He said there had been "very few" instances reported in the school of planned, consistent and repeated bullying.
"It makes sense to get outside agencies when we find we're not equipped to deal with an issue such as bullying.
"We run a restorative school. If anybody harms someone else we seek to involve the families of the victim and the wrongdoer."