Posted by: media officer
Bullying in school or college can have a devastating effect on
children, young people and their families.
Last year, we confirmed funding for five leading organisations,
worth over £1m in total, to support schools and colleges as part
of their responsibility to tackle all forms bullying.
Here’s what you need to know about the progress that has been
made to help combat bullying in education.
What organisations have received grants from the
government and how are they being used?
Diana Award
The Diana Award is implementing an anti-bullying programme to
empower young people with the skills, tools, confidence, and
knowledge needed to significantly transform school culture and
provide support to peers.
They will create tailored resources and training to deliver
content that meets the needs of students and school staff
tackling bullying behaviour in school, the wider community and
online.
Training will be delivered through large, multiple-school
sessions at venues across the country, offering schools the
opportunity to share and support learning.
Each school will have teams of around 10 students who will be
Anti-Bullying Ambassadors, these will be supported by school
staff.
Anti-Bullying
Alliance
United Against Bullying
(UAB) Programme (anti-bullyingalliance.org.uk)
The Anti-Bullying Alliance (ABA) will be implementing 'United
Against All Bullying' a new anti-bullying support programme,
which embeds practice to help to prevent and tackle bullying in
schools, including that of pupils with protected characteristics
such as LGBT, SEND, race or religion or sexual/sexist bullying.
Through this programme, the ABA will increase the quality of
support and information available to schools; make sure support
is based on the evidence about what works in this space; and
embed practice into other areas such as Relationships, Sex and
Health Education (RSHE).
Anne Frank Trust
UK
The Anne Frank Trust have developed the 'Different But
The Same' project.
This is a three-year intensive anti-bullying project, which will
provide training and support for 79,960 young people, their
teachers and schools to tackle bullying focused on protected
characteristics including LGBT+, SEND, race or religion/and
belief or sexual/sexist-based bullying.
The programme will help young people respect identity differences
while recognising common humanity and anti-bullying values.
Through learning about Anne Frank's experiences and expanding
this to other victimised groups, young people will develop
empathy for victims, thereby decreasing further incidents and
teachers will be equipped support victims and challenge
perpetrators.
Diversity Role
Models
Embracing Difference,
Ending Bullying - A new project (diversityrolemodels.org)
Diversity Role Models will deliver a package of interventions to
schools which will help make sure that staff have the knowledge
and skills to tackle and prevent bullying and create inclusive
school cultures.
The programme will be underpinned by identifying and
understanding knowledge
gaps within schools and specifics challenges they
face.
At the end of the project, policies and processes will be widely
understood by staff, while both staff
and pupil participants will feel confident in
intervening if they witness bullying.
EqualiTeach
EqualiTeach will work with schools through
their Multi-Academy Trusts (MATs) and/or local authorities (LAs)
to provide a programme, full of practical support, which will
create sustainable whole-school change.
By working with schools in clusters in MATs/LAs, the programme
will build support networks of schools who are embedding best
practice and who will continue building and sharing this practice
after the intervention has ended.
Over the course of the programme, EqualiTeach will build an
online platform of interactive resources which will be available
for schools throughout the country to develop their anti-bullying
work.
What else are you doing to help tackle bullying in
education?
Our relationships, sex and
health education (RSHE) guidance and training resources
give schools the confidence to construct a curriculum that
reflects diversity of views and backgrounds, while fostering
respect for others and the understanding of healthy
relationships.
The new RSHE subjects also include teaching about bullying,
healthy friendships, equality and the risks of stereotyping and
online safety to ensure children are kept safe both in school but
also at home, where cyberbullying can continue. Online safety
should also be included in a school’s child protection policy.
Our Teaching Online Safety in
Schools guidance aims to support schools in teaching
pupils how to stay safe online within new and existing school
subjects, such as RSHE, Citizenship and Computing.
Through our Preventing and Tackling
Bullying guidance we provide further advice for schools
on preventing and responding to bullying, including advice for
head teachers and school staff on cyberbullying.
As part of this, schools are also required to have policies to
prevent all forms of bullying that give head teachers the
confidence to ensure they can deal with any behaviour that
prevents a calm, disciplined learning environment.