As we reach the end of 2025, we hope you’re able to enjoy a well-earned break over the festive season after what has been a busy and eventful year. We are profoundly grateful to everyone who has worked tirelessly to improve the lives of children and young people by standing up against bullying. Looking back on our team discussions, it’s incredible to see just how far we’ve come since January.
This year has brought both challenges and achievements, reflecting the complexity of the world we navigate together. While bullying levels across the UK remain a concern, we genuinely feel that progress is being made - through deepening our understanding of bullying, refining what works to prevent it, and strengthening the ways we respond when it occurs. These strides are only possible thanks to the passion and dedication of our brilliant members and the wider children’s workforce, all united in our mission to end bullying.
Thank you for your unwavering commitment. We wish you a peaceful festive season and a bright, hopeful start to the new year.
As our team discovered in the Christmas quiz, the 12 days of Christmas begin on Christmas Day. Continuing our annual tradition, we’ve pulled together 12 things we are especially proud to have achieved in 2025 - our Twelve ‘Yays’ of Christmas:
1. We delivered CPD training to thousands of schools and professionals across the children’s sector this year. We successfully transitioned our online training to a new, faster platform - why not explore our courses today? We’re also looking ahead to 2026, with several live CPD sessions already available to book.
2. We are proud to have completed the second and final year of our United Against Bullying Plus (UAB+) Programme - our FREE whole-school anti-bullying programme for secondary schools, delivered in partnership with Kidscape and funded by the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) and the Youth Endowment Fund (YEF). The pilot evaluation will be led by the Anna Freud Centre – watch this space!
Find out more about the programme here.
You can watch the United Against Bullying Plus Celebration video below:
3. Anti-Bullying Week 2025: Power for Good was a huge success reaching thousands of schools and millions of children across England, Wales and Northern Ireland. We gave out free school packs, films and social media toolkits all developed with young people. We also worked again with the BBC on their BBC Teach Live lesson for Anti-Bullying Week. A massive thank you to everyone who made Anti-Bullying Week so special this year!
4. 6 people across England, Wales and Northern Ireland received our School Staff Award in 2025. We received 100s of nominations across the UK, with pupils nominating teachers and school staff that went above and beyond the call of duty to prevent and respond to bullying and to raise awareness of bullying in school. We are delighted to have been supported by Radnor FAM to bring the award to the UK again, as well as for the support of BulliesOut in Wales. All those nominated received a certificate, whilst the winners got their hands on some lovely prizes from Radnor FAM and trophies.
5. Millions of children and adults (and pets) joined in with Odd Socks Day, which forms part of Anti-Bullying Week and is delivered in partnership with our patron Andy Day and his band Andy and the Odd Socks. We worked with Andy to bring you free school resources about the importance of reaching out for help about bullying, a video and song, and an Odd Socks competition on social media for schools to win a visit from Andy and the Odd Socks! We also ran our ‘Pets In Odd Socks’ competition again this year, and the ABA staff loved seeing the adorable pictures that were shared as a result! All our Odd Socks Day resources are still on our website for you to use. You can find Welsh versions of these resources here.
6. We’re delighted that young people from St Regis Church of England Academy had an unforgettable weekend when Manchester City defender and Portugal captain Rúben Dias, Patron of the Anti-Bullying Alliance, surprised them with a once-in-a-lifetime experience at the Etihad Stadium.
7. We were pleased to launch several new online resources this year, all of which were written with input from young people. This includes the All Together Guide, CPD Training, and Research report here, and our anti-bullying foundations here.
8. We have united against bullying! We have been delighted with how many new members we have this year. Our membership is the life blood of our work and integral to achieving our aims. This year we have held 4 member meetings and 4 #Take20Talks, where we hear a 20-minute presentation from a member about their anti-bullying work. We couldn’t achieve what we do without the support of our amazing members. They all have their own resources and anti-bullying tools available as well. Have a look at our members here and you can find out more about signing up to become a member here.
9. We're so pleased to say that we had a new intake of our Young ABA group of young people from across England and for the second year Northern Ireland. This group of over 50 teenagers, have supported us on our programme work and Anti-Bullying Week. We've provided them with training throughout the year and they've inputted into our work to ensure that young people voice is at the centre of the work we do. We thank them for their time and look forward to establishing a new group in January!
10. We are delighted to announce that our flagship United Against Bullying (UAB) whole-school anti-bullying programme is now available to schools in England for the 2025–26 academic year.
Developed over 10+ years and grounded in robust evidence, UAB is designed to guide your school through a clear, structured, and impactful approach to reducing bullying, focusing on those pupils most at risk, including children and young people with SEND, children and young people who experience racist and faith-targeted bullying, sexual bullying, homophobic, biphobic and transphobic bullying, looked-after children, young carers and those on free school meals.
11. We have been delighted to celebrate the success of our Belonging Matters programme. Funded by the Kusuma Trust, the 'Belonging Matters' was an 18-month programme offered for free to 10 schools in London, started in June 2024, based on an extensive literature review by Goldsmiths University on behalf of NCB. As the programme comes to an end, we are delighted to share the final summary report covering the key findings of the programme.
12. And last, but by no means least, we’re thrilled that have produced a new fundraising animation this year - A huge thank you to Animwood Studio (https://www.behance.net/animwoodstudio) & Paweł Lewicki (https://pawellewicki.com/) for creating this powerful video.
So that’s our Twelve ‘Yays’ of Christmas. We would love to hear yours too. Please tag us using #12YaysOfXmas. We have lots of plans for 2026 and we aim to keep providing you with anti-bullying resources from ABA and our members. We all hope you have a restful, safe and happy Christmas break and we can’t wait to work with you all in the new year.
