We hope you will be able to take a well-earned rest over the Christmas period after what has been a jam packed year. We are endlessly grateful to all who have been working to improve the lives of children and young people and reduce bullying during the highs and lows of 2022. At our team meeting the other day we were thinking about how January feels like a lifetime ago, this year has been exhausting and productive for us as it has for many as we’ve emerged from the pandemic to face many other challenges as well as make up for lost time not seeing loved ones. We had a huge amount of engagement from schools during Anti-Bullying Week this year, and it looks as though we had more schools take part in the week than ever before! As another year comes to an end, we see this as a true testament to the passion and dedication of the workforce and it made us so proud seeing so many of our resources and activities being used in schools around the country.
Our Twelve 'Yays' of Christmas banner
According to our Zoom team Christmas quiz, there are 12 days of Christmas that start on Christmas day. We’ve come up with 12 things that we are proud of achieving as a team in 2021, our Twelve ‘Yays’ of Christmas:
- We have provided CPD training to over 44k school and wider children’s sector staff. Be it online or face to face, we will continue to provide training in 2023. All our online training is still available and you receive a certificate of completion for all courses you undertake and you can find all our live training courses most of which are free to take part in listed here. Don’t miss out on this opportunity and take part today.
- We were delighted that in the first year of our United Against Bullying (UAB) over 180 schools were awarded with United Against Bullying School status. UAB is our anti-bullying support programme, which is funded by the Department for Education for schools in England until 2024 and aims to embeds skills, tools and confidence in the workforce to help to prevent and tackle bullying in schools. It helps schools to take a whole-school approach to reduce and respond appropriately to bullying incidence and particularly focus on reducing bullying of those most at risk, including those with protected characteristics. All schools in England can join for free and will be supported to become UAB Schools and UAB Leaders.
- Anti-Bullying Week 2022: Reach Out was a huge success reaching thousands of schools and millions of children across England, Wales and Northern Ireland (through our sister organisation the Northern Ireland Anti-Bullying Forum). We gave out free school packs, films and social media toolkits all developed with young people. We trended across social media and even the likes of Brian May and Arsenal football club got involved! We had two winners of our School Staff Award in England and two more in Wales. We released our research about levels of bullying in schools in England which showed 24% of pupils report being bullied in the last few weeks alone with children on FSM and those with SEND fairing the worst and poor wellbeing and school experiences among both bullied children and children who bully. We also worked with the BBC on their BBC Teach Live lesson for Anti-Bullying Week which was their most successful live lesson of the year.
- Millions of children and adults (and pets) joined in with Odd Socks Day, which forms part of Anti-Bullying Week and is supported by 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 photo competition on social media for schools to win a visit from Andy and the Odd Socks! We also ran a ‘Pets In Odd Socks’ competition on Twitter and Instagram, 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.
- We worked with leading anti-bullying researcher, Professor Peter Smith (Goldsmiths University), to deliver our annual round up of all the bullying and cyberbullying research released in the previous year in the UK called our ‘Focus On Bullying 2021’.
- We were pleased to launch several new free online resources this year, all of which were written with input from young people. The new resources include an update to our Sexual and Sexist Bullying courses with input from NSPCC and Kidscape and many new case studies from schools.
- Membership growth: We have been delighted with how many new members we have this year with the invention of our new School and College Membership, we have gone from 160 members last year to over 230. Our membership is the life blood of our work and integral to achieving our aims. This year we have held 5 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
- We're so pleased to say that we started our first Young ABA group of young people from across England and Wales. This group of over 20 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!
- ABA turned 20 years old: We celebrate our 20th birthday this year. To celebrate we held an event in Parliament where we were joined by friends of ABA from over the 20 years and we collected stories about what ABA means to us from across our membership. You can read these stories here along with a lovely blog from our Chair, Claude Knights reflecting on 20 years of the Alliance.
- This year we were excited to join forces with WWE and the Welsh Government on a campaign encouraging children to reach out about bullying. We went to Cardiff and was joined by the stars of WWE to talk to young people about their experiences of bullying and how to be an upstander.
- We were delighted to secure funding from the Dr Martens Foundation to help us bring you a new online CPD course about appearance targeted bullying, which is one of the most common reasons children are bullied. We've been consulting with young people and professionals about it and the course is coming to you in early January 2023. Thank you Dr Martens :)
- Andy and the Odd Socks on an odd sock tour of schools encouraging children to reach out! Andy and the Odd Socks went on a school tour before Anti-Bullying Week encouraging children to reach out about bullying. They visited all parts of the country taking some very special guests with them!
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 2023 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.
Best wishes
Martha Evans (Director of ABA) and the whole ABA team
Merry Christmas from ABA banner