Prevent bullying in your school with new CPD

Achievement for All develops a range innovative workshops in time for Anti-Bullying Week

Anti-Bullying Week started today, aiming to raise awareness of bullying of children and young people and to highlight ways of preventing it, and education charity Achievement for All has announced a range of new training workshops for schools in a bid to help prevent bullying, particularly for pupils with SEND.

Despite progress by schools over the past 20 years to address the social and cultural causes of bullying, pupils identified with SEND remain at a higher risk from bullying than any other pupil. The new training will provide schools with an opportunity to look in detail at their approaches to dealing with the problem.

The government announced today that incidents of bullying in secondary schools had plummeted in the last decade, with 30,000 fewer pupils being bullied since 2005. The Guardian reported that this figure is due to a sharp decrease in incidents of physical attacks and violent threats, but that the proportion of children suffering the most common form of attacks – name calling and social exclusion – remained largely similar.

The report also notes that cyber-bullying is on the rise, particular amongst girls, with 15 per cent saying they had been victims of online abuse, compared to 7 per cent of boys.

As the various forms in which school bullying takes place change it’s key that schools become more aware of them in order to reduce incidents of harassment between children. The Achievement for All workshops are designed to offer opportunities for staff to consider what they can do to prevent bullying and how to deal with it effectively when it does occur. They will also provide access to the latest research findings and a comprehensive directory of effective practice, along with evidence for self-evaluation and Ofsted inspections.

Additional resources have also been made available online, giving schools a range of tools to help support their Anti-Bullying work, which you can access here.