Web review - creating an anti-bullying school culture

As curriculum managers are well aware, bullying can have sustained and insidious effects on the whole school — contributing to poor attendance, lower achievement, a less conducive learning environment for all and a generally less pleasant school experience for students and teachers alike.

(www.ngfl.gov.uk/features).

More focused attention has been given to this important issue at a national level, in an attempt to eradicate bullying in the nation’s schools. But it is how this is translated at a school level that really counts.

This website offers management advice, tools and support resources that you can use to help you improve the approach taken to tackling bullying in your school.

As part of the National Grid for Learning (NGfL) site, it offers:

factsheets outlining recent research into bullying and the impact it can have, what the law says about bullying, and what schools should do about it
ideas and activities for all ages, many of which can be led and organised by the pupils themselves
an action checklist, with questions you can answer to assess the extent and impact of bullying in your school, so that you can then act effectively to reduce it
a questionnaire to use with the checklist to help you identify the specific bullying issues for your school, with ideas about how to involve students in collecting and analysing responses.

The ideas are listed in categories: policy and planning; assemblies; curriculum activities; peer support; visual displays and artwork; breaktimes; whole-school ideas. Suggestions for activities range from creating a friendship quilt, and setting up a sorry box to making anti-bullying symbols for use around the school, and involving students in rewriting your anti-bullying policy so that it is more understandable and relevant to them.

There is a separate resources section that takes you to the Anti-bullying Alliance site. Here you will find details of bullying helplines for students, parents and more general ones. From here, you can access advice on how to set up and implement effective anti-bullying policy, classroom resources and activities, and suggestions of suitable staff training on the issue. You can also explore in more detail bullying relating to specific areas: homophobia, racism, and disability. This site includes a news section to keep you up to date in all the latest changes and events in the anti-bullying arena.

So the NGfL site is a handy one to use as a portal for useful tools and resources to help you improve the anti-bullying policy developed in your school.

This article first appeared in Curriculum Management Update - Dec 2005

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