It’s likely that one in two children entering high school will go on to get bullied, which leads to the question, are primary schools doing enough to prevent bullying?

Firstly, it’s important to regularly review and update your school’s anti-bullying policy. To create an effective policy, it’s necessary to be both reactive to events and proactive to prevent the events before they take place.

Let’s look at how to prevent bullying in the first instance.

The most important bullying prevention technique is simply education. Ensure you regularly teach children about bullying so they understand what it is and why it take places. It’s also important to use these opportunities to debunk any commons myths about bullying, such as bullying is only physical harm.

Be open about the prevalence of bullying within your own school. If it’s not so much of an issue, tell children it’s their responsibility to help keep it that way. If it is an issue, give children examples of incidences and the impact they’ve had on others, then tell them what they can do to stop it from happening again.

Bullying prevention is more effective if the topic of bullying is treated as a theme across several lessons as opposed to a separate lesson itself. Learning about bullying can easily be incorporated into PSHE, art and literacy. Ideas include:

• A presentation exercise on the facts about bullying
• A class display on why bullying is wrong
• A class discussion about how to stand against bullying
• A writing exercise on the consequences of bullying
• A drawing exercise on what a healthy friendship looks like
• A reading exercise about respecting others
• A case study exercise on a celebrity who has suffered from bullying

Use the ideas generated from these activities to amend the school’s anti-bullying policy.

Make bullying an outgoing theme throughout the year, as opposed to restricting its teaching to a specific timeframe. This will help establish an anti-bullying ethos that extends from Reception right through to Year 6.

Getting attention from others plays a large role in a child’s desire to bully. So make bullying an unattractive option by diminishing any recognition for bullying, and focus instead on rewarding respectful behaviour and positive contributions to the school ethos.

An anti-bullying ethos works on the psychological prevention of bullying, but what about actually physically preventing bullying, i.e. avoiding any physical scenarios in which bullying could occur and making all school activities inclusive and supportive.

An effective obstruction to bullying is adult supervision. So ensure that there are enough teaching staff to keep a diligent watch over pupils in key locations where bullying could occur, such as in the dinner hall or playground.

Now, let’s look at preventing repeat occurrences.

It’s thought that encouragement and praise is a better deterrent against bullying than discipline, and that some disciplinary actions can even encourage bullying, due to the attention bullies receive from others.

Review your discipline procedures and make a note of whether or not they are effective at tackling bullying. If not, it might be a good opportunity to change tack to a more praise-based approach.

Often, young bullies don’t understand the magnitude of their behaviour. So when teaching children about bullying, it’s important to focus on the consequences, both for the victim and the bully themselves.

If offending children are obliged to take a closer look at the effects bullying has on others, they are able to form a connection between their actions and the consequences, and will be less likely to engage in bullying behaviour in the future.

It’s important that every case of bullying is closed with a resolution, usually by way of an apology or respectful action. For each instance, a bully should be made aware of the consequences of the actions, and encouraged to make amends. Some ideas include:

• Writing a letter of apology
• Making a list of positive things about other children
• Writing an essay about what changes they need to make
• Performing and recording a good deed every day
• Designing a bullying prevention poster
• Any of the lesson ideas from above

The aim of this approach is to encourage empathy and teach responsibility.

While a victim needs plenty of support to ensure they are able to recover from bullying, it’s also important for the bully to receive support. This is because they are often also the victim of some kind of hardship.

Teachers should aim to help boost an offender’s confidence and increase their sense of worth, so they don’t feel they have to resort to bullying to get the attention they crave.

For more information on bullying advice for schools, visit BullyingUK.