1.2) Our school community recognises the serious harm that can be caused by bullying, school staff monitor wider data for indicators of bullying, and assess its effects on wellbeing, attainment, attendance and potential safeguarding risks.

Rating description: 

  • Fully met: Our whole school community - including staff, pupils and parents -understand the serious harm bullying can have on wellbeing, attainment and attendance. Staff understand when bullying should be considered a safeguarding issue, and monitor attendance to identify signs of bullying. 
  • Partially met: Most of our school community understand the serious harm bullying can have on wellbeing, attainment and attendance. Most staff understand when bullying should be considered a safeguarding issue, but they do not monitor attendance to identify signs of bullying. 
  • Not yet met: Our school community do not understand the serious harm bullying can have on wellbeing, attainment and attendance. Some staff understand when bullying should be considered a safeguarding issue, but they do not monitor attendance to identify signs of bullying.

Why is this important?

We know through various studies over the decades that bullying has a substantial impact on the mental health, wellbeing, physical health and safety of children. We also know that children who are bullied go on the achieve less well in schools than other children (see resources below for links to research). Because of these risks, along with the aggressive nature of some bullying behaviour, we know that bullying can often be a safeguarding issue: it's vital that your school staff know when to treat it as such and keep the the pupils in your care safe.

Research shows that at any one time 16,000 pupils ages 11-16 miss school primarily due to bullying: this is a significant number of days lost and is likely to have a significant impact on pupil attainment. It is important as a school that you monitor these absences so that you can be proactive in responding to bullying that might be causing school absence, and support pupils to feel happy and safe to return to school.

Tips:

  • A way of encouraging your staff to understand bullying as a safeguarding issue, you could ask them to complete ABA's online CPD training module on bullying and the law, or to download and send out ABA's briefing on bullying and the law.
  • Have you got a way of recording absence due to bullying? If not, think about how you might adapt your recording system or monitor absence so that you can be aware of this.
  • You may be able to monitor these levels via your anti-bullying staff lead and governor lead - it might be something to add to their responsibilities or oversight.  
  • If there are any cases of pupil absence where you suspect bullying might be a contributing factor, have a process for investigating this. 

Resources and examples: 

Resources: 

  • Find out more about the available research about the impact of bullying here. 
  • Working together to improve school attendance (DfE)
  • Read this research by NatCen on estimating the prevalence of young people absent from school due to bullying 
  • Read this study by NFER which found that 'encouraging rather than punitive approaches' were seen as fairer by pupils and fostered a culture of belonging

Examples

Please note that examples from primary and other school settings may still include some useful hints and tips you can adapt and apply for a secondary setting.

See below for quotes and pieces of advice from other schools: 

  • "All staff complete an online Safeguarding Course every Sept within which bullying is revisited. As a result, bullying maintains a high profile from the start of the year."
  • "Bullying has been included on our safeguarding systems as a category that flags up as a concern. Staff understand that the impacts on young people know to report bullying via our safeguarding systems. The health and well-being team have started work with students who are victims of bullying to re-build their confidence and they liaise with the school nurse service if we have concerns around physical health and make appropriate referrals with regards to mental health concerns."
  • "Children who complain of feeling unwell are always seen by a first aider as well as the school Family Support Worker to talk about how they are feeling in case it is not just sickness but anxiety or worries."
  • "All absence is closely monitored and explored including consideration of peer relationships and their impact on attendance. 
  • "Our attendance improvement works are our pastoral leaders, who have received a clear directive to assess for bullying on all unexplained absences. Our attendance first line responder flags up all absence issues, that parents are reporting as linking to bullying, to the Pastoral Leader and via our safeguarding system. This is now reported on half termly to AP for Pastoral and forms part of the welfare agenda at our governors meetings."
  • "The earlier that attendance issues are addressed, the best outcome for the child happens. We have many issues of students worrying about something that has been said, sent on social media platform and therefor want to avoid school, parents are encouraged to send their children into school knowing that a member of staff will be on hand to meet the student and manage the situation at the start of the day."

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Note: the resources listed at the bottom of this page have all been referenced and linked in the case study section above.