Rating description:
- Fully met: Celebrating ALL differences, diversity and the importance of a sense of belonging for all pupils is weaved throughout school life and the curriculum, including through RSHE and assemblies. Pupils are encouraged to be themselves.
- Partially met: Celebrating differences, diversity and the importance of a sense of belonging for pupils is weaved throughout some of our school curriculum including through RSHE and assemblies.
- Not yet met: Celebrating differences, diversity and the importance of a sense of belonging for pupils is not reflected in our school curriculum or through assemblies.
Why is this importnat?
Celebrating difference and diversity as part of your prevention strategy helps create an inclusive environment where all pupils feel seen and valued. These opportunities also play a crucial role in deepening pupils’ understanding of bullying, including online bullying, and its harmful impact. By embedding these themes across the curriculum, including within RSHE, assemblies, and other cross-curricular opportunities, schools can promote empathy, challenge prejudice and discriminatory language, and equip pupils with the knowledge and skills to foster respectful relationships and stand against bullying in all its forms.
Top Tips:
- We often hear from young people that they feel like 'Here comes the annual anti-bullying lesson or the diversity lesson', which makes them feel not fully involved. This indicates a sense of apathy and we know that a cross-curricular approach where pupils take a lead in celebrating difference and diversity is often more effective, making it weaved within the school.
- You can find many resources on our website about celebrating difference and diversity. Have a look at Anti-Bullying Week 2017: All Different, All Equal and the Anti-Bullying Week 2024: Choose Respect resources.
- You can use activities such as Circle Time to foster discussion, hold assemblies on different themes around bullying (for example Reporting, HBT Bullying, Banter), have a guest speaker from a linked police officer about hate crime, have a day of collapsed timetable to focus on all thing bullying.
Resources & Examples:
Resources
- ABA's Bullying Prevention Tool - which can be used for school's and other settings of children's workforce.
- A selection of books related to bullying behaviour for Primary Schools - collated by the Diana Award and supported by the Department for Education.
- Digital Matters - an interactive online safety learning platform from Internet Matters, which includes a Cyberbullying module.
- Cyberbullying Guidance from Childnet - about understanding, preventing, and responding to online bullying.
- PHSE lesson plans from Ditch the Label - on a variety of topics, such as unconscious bias, gender stereotypes, and bullying.
- Anti-Bullying Workshop - from Wicked the Musical.
- Resources for teaching children about diversity - from Multicultural Kids Blogs.
- Resources for Black History Month - from the National Literacy Trust.
- Family Lives have useful tips for parents on how to deal with online bullying, and these can be shared with your parents and carers.
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.
- Secondary School Case Study - on developing cultural awareness across school.
- Secondary School Case Study - on creating a monthly anti-bullying magazine that is shared with the whole school community.
- Primary School Case Study - on celebrating diversity in school.
- Watch the below video for an example from Fountains High School, a Gold United Against Bullying school, about celebrating the diversity of their pupils:
- Watch the below video for an example from St Albans Girls School, a Silver United Against Bullying school, about promotion of diversity in their school.
See below for quotes and pieces of advice from other schools:
- "The children feel more involved and empowered to speak up about all sorts of things having been given the opportunity, which only helps us to improve the school even further, and helps them feel like important members of the community."
- "International week to celebrate diversity across the school - each year group focuses on a country and learns about this - we have activities to celebrate different cultures."
- "Safer Internet Day assembly and workshop delivered. Assemblies throughout the year to acknowledge various events and themes- Black History, Refugee Week, Commonwealth Day, World Environment Day, Holocaust etc as well as religious and cultural learning, PHSE/SMSC themes around our ethos and values and our school rules."