Anti-Bullying Week 2018: Choose Respect

Anti-Bullying Week 2018 had the theme Choose Respect and was held between 12th - 16th November 2018, and was sponsorsed by SafetoNet.

  • Based on an independent poll of teachers we reached 79% of schools in England reaching roughly 19,200 schools and 7.5 million pupils. 41% of schools took part in Odd Socks Day and 36% held Stop Speak Support Day 

  • The theme for Anti-Bullying Week 2018 was: ‘Choose Respect’ and it ran from 12th - 16th November 2018 and it was our biggest Anti-Bullying Week yet! 

  • We held Odd Socks Day for Anti-Bullying Week again on the first day of Anti-Bullying Week held our first ever 'Stop Speak Support' cyberbullying day on the Thursday of Anti-Bullying Week supported by The Duke of Cambridge and The Royal Foundation 

You can find out how to donate any money raised during the week here. 

We polled over 500 pupils and over 500 teachers about Anti-Bullying Week 2018. We found: 

  • 82% of teachers and 80% of pupils agree that Anti-Bullying Week is a useful event in the school calendar

  • 91% of teachers and 96% of pupils agree that Anti-Bullying Week helps raise awareness of bullying

  • 81% of teachers and pupils agree that Anti-Bullying Week helps schools tackle bullying

  • 69% of teachers and 68% of pupils agree that Anti-Bullying Week helps to reduce bullying

  • 69% of teachers felt that they had the resources they needed to make Anti-Bullying Week happen in their school.

You can read a full evaluation report about Anti-Bullying Week here. 

The theme for Anti-Bullying Week 2018 was to choose respect.

Following a consultation with over 800 children, teachers and members of the Anti-Bullying Alliance, it emerged that a top priority was showing that bullying is a behaviour choice, and that children and young people can set a positive example by opting to respect each other at school, in their homes and communities, and online.

The aims of the week were to support schools and other settings to help children and young people, school staff, parents and other professionals who work with children to understand:

  • The definition of respect

  • That bullying is a behaviour choice

  • That we can respectfully disagree with each other i.e. we don’t have to be best friends or always agree with each other but we do have to respect each other

  • That we all need to choose to respect each other both face to face and online

The Anti-Bullying Alliance, with the continued support of SafeToNet, developed a set of free cross-curricular teaching resources to support both primary and secondary schools to embrace the theme of respect.

During the week we: 

Trended on Twitter across all three of our hashtags 

  • Developed a number of school resources, lesson plans and assembly plans around the theme of Choose Respect.
  • Released poll stats about how children feel about bullying and respect. We also found out about how they felt about adults bullying each other. These stats appeared across a range of media including BBC News, Sky News, Loose Women, BBC Newsround, The Daily Mirror, The Independent, The Sun and many radio stations. 
  • CBeebies star Andy Day and Anti-Bullying Alliance patron, and his band Andy and the Odd Socks, supported Anti-Bullying Week 2018 and encouraged students to wear odd socks to school during the campaign to show their support and raise money for a good cause.
  • We also held our first ever Stop Speak Support Day to try and tackle cyberbullying which was supported by The Royal Foundation, the Royal Cyberbullying Taskforce and The Duke of Cambridge. 
  • We awarded two members of staff with the Anti-Bullying Week School Staff Award for those inspiring members of the school workforce who go the extra mile to support pupils and prevent bullying. The awards were presented by the Minister for Schools, Nick Gibb MP at a parliamentary event in Anti-Bullying Week. 

Odd-socks Day 2018: 

Andy and the Odd Socks wrote this amazing toe tapping song for Odd Socks Day 2018. It's call 'Choose Respect' and it encompasses why we do Odd Socks Day. The school pack for 2018 was written around the song. 

Our sponsors SafeToNet:

SafeToNet is an e-safety company that uses artificial intelligence to support and encourage children and young people to use the internet safely. To ensure children’s safety it can automatically recognise and block harmful incoming and outgoing messages sent and received by children on social networks and messaging apps. It can identify and block cyberbullying, abuse, sexting and other predatory risks.