Blog – Latest stories tagged 'bullying'

Nominate your anti-bullying member of school staff today!

Whether it is verbal, physical, online or in-person, bullying has a significant impact on a child’s life well into adulthood.

The Anti-Bullying Alliance is urging action for this year’s Anti-Bullying Week and saying that by making small, simple changes, we can break this cycle and create a safe environment for everyone.

Change Starts With Us

The Alliance has announced the theme of Anti-Bullying Week 2019 as ‘Change Starts With Us’, underlining how everyday acts like listening to young people, having a conversation, thinking about the impact of our words or stopping before hitting ‘like’ on a hurtful social media post, can help to reduce bullying.

The campaign aims to emphasise that we all have a part to play: Change Starts With Us.

Following a consultation with over 1,000 children and 200 teachers, schools staff and members of the Anti-Bullying Alliance, it emerged that a top priority was giving pupils, staff, parents and other key players such as government and industry the tools to prevent and respond to bullying both online and offline.

This year, the Anti-Bullying Alliance is expecting widespread support for Anti-Bullying Week, which was celebrated in 80% of schools in 2018. ABA will be working with young people to develop parent tools, films, a social media campaign and a set of free cross-curricular teaching resources to support both primary and secondary schools to embrace the theme.

Odd Socks Day will be held once again to mark the first day of Anti-Bullying Week. CBeebies star and Anti-Bullying Alliance patron Andy Day and his band Andy and the Odd Socks are supporting Anti-Bullying Week 2019 and are encouraging students to wear odd socks to school to celebrate what makes us all unique.

Anti-Bullying Week Award for School Staff

There will also be Anti-Bullying Week School Staff Awards for those inspiring members of the school workforce who go the extra mile to support pupils and prevent bullying. Pupils can nominate members of school staff for the award.

Click here to find out more and to download the entry form

Martha Evans, Director of the Anti-Bullying Alliance, said:
“Children and young people tell us time and time again how being bullied can leave you feeling powerless. However, it does not have to be this way. Our consultation with pupils, teachers and many others, showed that we can all make changes to be part of the solution. Whether it is speaking to someone we trust when bullying happens to us, or calling it out if we suspect it’s happening to someone else, we can all work together for a solution. Remember, change starts here, change starts now, change starts with us.”

Anti-Bullying Week runs from 11 to 15 November 2019 – get involved at www.anti-bullyingalliance.org.uk @ABAonline #AntiBullyingWeek #ChangeStartsWithUs #OddSocks.

Small actions make a big difference in fight against bullying

Stop Cyberbullying Day - June 21st 2019
Stop Cyberbullying Day was founded by The Cybersmile Foundation on June 17th 2012, to promote online positivity and good digital citizenship.

Since then, every year on the third Friday in June, Stop Cyberbullying Day has become a growing force of positivity.

Stop Cyberbullying Day brings together people from all corners of the globe to show their support for a positive and productive online environment. With your help, we can ensure that everybody has the right to all the benefits our new connected world has to offer. Whether you choose to be involved on the day itself or whether you choose to work with us year-round, your involvement is greatly appreciated not only by us – but also by the millions of victims of cyberbullying and online abuse around the world.

To get involved you can use the hashtag #STOPCYBERBULLYINGDAY on the day with your content (images, videos, articles) to let people know you are participating on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube - supporting a brighter, kinder internet.

Schools can also become an Official School Partner .

Join our FREE Membership service for our bullying assembly resource. E-safety Support members can also download cyber bullying specific resources and distribute Internet safety training. Safeguarding Essentials members have access to the full suite of cyber bullying and bullying resources including policies, teaching resources and staff training. Find out more.

Tootoot launch free World Pride celebration toolkit

June marks the start of Pride month, a time to celebrate diversity, promote equal rights and recognise the contributions that LGBT+ people have made to the world.

Whilst society has come a long way since the Stonewall riots in 1969, LGBT+ people still face stigma and prejudice in their everyday lives.

This prejudice can start early in an individual’s life, young people who identify as LGBT+ are more likely to be bullied in school and, in 2017, Stonewall found that 45 per cent of LGBT+ pupils in Britain’s schools were bullied for being LGBT+.

This can significantly affect the mental health of LGBT+ pupils when they are older - there is overwhelming research showing the correlation between being bullied as an adolescent LGBT+ person and developing serious mental illnesses later on in life. (Nancy L. Beckerman & Charles Auerbach, 2014)

There has been new legislation brought in this year giving better to guidance to schools about how to teach topics such as LGBT+ relationships and identities to their pupils. This will help pupils to understand that there is nothing wrong with being LGBT+ and will in turn help to remove prejudices and discrimination.

Since launching, tootoot has supported over 140 students to speak-up about LGBT+ cases ranging from homophobic bullying and name-calling to hate crimes. The number of cases reported on tootoot increased by 144 per cent between 2016 and 2018. This could reflect that already pupils have an increased awareness of what LGBT+ discrimination is, and are choosing to seek support for it using tootoot.

For Pride month we have created a free toolkit to help your school celebrate pride, improve awareness and make it easier for your students to speak-up.

Your toolkit will include:

• Free targeted resources to encourage LGBT+ inclusiveness in your school
  
• Access to tootmood – the simple feedback app that makes it easy to track the feelings and attitudes of your pupils
  
• Access to tootoot – the pupil voice software that gives pupils a simple and trusted way to talk about any concerns

Click here to sign-up to the toolkit and we will be in contact shortly after.