Our Programme Lead, Jess, shares some of the achievements and advice from schools who completed our whole-school anti-bullying pilot programme, United Against Bullying Plus (UAB+) 2023-25.
As this two-year pilot programme comes to a close, I have been reflecting on the impact of United Against Bullying Plus, and some of the wonderful conversations I had with schools at the end of the summer term.
The programme, funded by the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF), ran in 15 secondary schools across England from September 2023 until July 2025. Its aim was to support schools to develop an innovative whole-school approach to reducing bullying, and deliver direct interventions to support children most at risk of perpetrating, and experiencing bullying (find out more about what was involved at our website page here). EEF also funded an independent pilot evaluation of the programme, the findings from which are expected to be published in Spring 2026.
Separate to the evaluation, we caught up with some of our partner schools to find out how they’d found the programme. In doing so we heard so many brilliant anecdotes of successful anti-bullying work that I wanted to share some of their achievements. So I have put together here three small snapshots to showcase just some of the things we are particularly proud of our schools for achieving (plus some advice they had for schools and other settings):
1. Developing effective reporting and recording systems
We know that no whole-school anti-bullying approach can be effective without a good quality bullying reporting and recording system, and this was something that many of our UAB+ schools have worked incredibly hard to develop over the past 2 years.
With our support and guidance, schools overhauled reporting mechanisms for pupils, ensuring that they are accessible, recognised, and record the right data. Here’s a quote from one of our schools who implemented a new reporting mechanism for pupils by using Microsoft Forms:
“Improving our reporting and recording system has been transformative. I feel so much more confident in our approach to anti-bullying because of this. […] We now have a more framed and structured system that asks what happened, who's involved, and critically, what the student feels comfortable with us doing at this point in time - making sure that the young person feels very much in control of next steps and making students feel a lot more confident to report - I think that's what we're most proud of. It’s also a lot less time consuming for staff too since we have all that information at the first instance of reporting. [Having this system] means we have a bigger picture of what’s going on in school - when you've got confidence in what the data is telling you, you know that you're investing your time and resources on the right stuff.”
One of the schools I visited also showed me the impressive and comprehensive spreadsheet that collated the data from bullying reports, giving the Anti-Bullying Lead a clear and accurate picture of their school. From this, they could identify patterns and trends, being more proactive about what they put in place to stop incidents from escalating. Another school had started tracking all types of unkindness, and told me this had strengthened their reporting approach, making it much more high profile throughout the school and finding that they had a decrease in confirmed bullying incidents since their new system meant they were nipping relational conflict issues in the bud before they could escalate into anything more serious, like bullying.
Speaking to pupils we could also see the direct impact of this work, with many of them telling us how their school was good at listening and having somewhere to go if they had something to report. One pupil explained, “the good thing about this school is when you report somebody for bullying, it always gets sorted out very quickly. So, you don’t feel worried that they’d come and be like ‘why did you report me’“.
2. Letting pupils lead the way
It’s often easy as staff to make decisions about anti-bullying work in school without really consulting the people it affects most: your pupils. Our UAB+ schools have worked hard over the past 2 years to ensure they not only listen to pupil voice but are led by it. This involved things such as: working with them to create a pupil-friendly version of their anti-bullying policy; using surveys to find out how pupils feel about the school’s approach to bullying; asking pupils what they want to see from a new reporting system; letting pupils take the lead in Anti-Bullying Week planning; and having a group of pupils lead the anti-bullying initiatives in school (e.g. Champions/Reps/Ambassadors). One school even had their Anti-Bullying Reps deliver workshops for Year 6s of their local feeder schools, which I was thrilled to be invited to attend (they were brilliant)!
All our UAB+ schools have appreciated the power of pupil voice, and here are a few of my favourite reflections and pieces of advice from those I spoke to last month:
“The creation of the student-friendly anti bullying policy, and doing that together with students, was a real eye-opener. We shared with the students our ideas, and they were like ‘no Miss, doing it this way would be better, this is what happens to us daily, this is what we want, this is what we feel should be in there’. They’re the ones living it day in and day out, they know exactly what's going on.”
“We’ve got a lot more student involvement [when bullying has been reported] – they tell us what they want to happen rather than us deciding for them […] they're more involved in the whole process rather than not being sure what’s going to happen next.”
“If I had one piece of advice to schools, it would be involve your students at every stage. They are the ones living it: they know what's going on in school and they can give you so much brilliant advice.”
3. Improving relationships with parents and carers
We were really pleased to hear from many schools that the impact of the programme hasn’t only been for those who are in the school building 5 days a week, but also for family members at home.
This was a pattern I noticed from many schools I spoke with last month, who spoke of the difference in how parents now approach their school about bullying compared to before they started the programme. To quote one school, “conversations have become less accusatory - the conversations are no longer "you have not done this", they are "something has happened and we need to work together to do something about it".
I heard similar stories from several other schools who had worked hard to include their whole community on their anti-bullying journey through many different ways, e.g. running parent workshops on the school’s anti-bullying approach; using the definition of bullying and the group roles involved in bullying when talking to parents about incidents; and, as one school put it, ‘over-communicating’ their reporting system to parents (and pupils and staff) so it remains familiar to all. Another school reflected on how the anti-bullying training we delivered at the start of the programme equipped staff with the language and solid understanding of the definition of bullying to help them feel confident to have constructive conversations with parents, highlighting the importance of regular staff training
(PSA: we have a live training date available during Anti-Bullying Week 2025!).
I could keep writing and make you keep scrolling through many, many more great examples and quotes from our UAB+ schools, but I won’t! Instead, I’m going to tell you to watch out for our celebration event during Anti-Bullying Week 2025, where some of our schools will be sharing examples of effective practice and you can hear more tips and advice from them. Keep an eye out on our Anti-Bullying Week website page for info!
To end, I am going to leave you with some food for thought directly from a UAB+ school…
“Don't be afraid to find faults in your systems and processes. Be ready to be open and think ‘actually, we're doing this wrong, we need to make changes.’ It’s OK to say ‘we do have bullying here’, the important thing is knowing and being confident in HOW you deal with that.”