Here you will find information on the Pupil Bullying and Wellbeing Questionnaire, which is a vital part of All Together as it gives direct feedback from pupils involved in the programme.
It's incredibly important to monitor levels of bullying in schools by understanding the experience of your pupils. This gives you a picture of levels of bullying and wellbeing and also helps you to identify where you might need to focus your anti-bullying energy.
Getting as many pupils as possible to take part in the questionnaire will give much more reliable data and is something we'll look at when awarding All Together status.
How to complete the ABA online questionnaire: a step-by-step guide
How is the Pupil Questionnaire data stored? Is it compliant with GDPR?
About the questionnaire
The questionnaire is based on research and consultation to develop a set of indicators that best capture the incidence and experience of bullying and assess well-being. It will allow you to ascertain:
- the wellbeing of pupils and the levels of bullying in your school
- differing levels of experience for pupils with SEN status and those in receipt of free school meals. This is because we know these young people are more likely to experience bullying than their peers
- what specific areas you need to focus on as part of your anti-bullying activity
For the first time, we will also ask you to input data on pupil faith and ethnicity. We will provide an additional report to your school on this by the end of the programme.
The questionnaire has been tested with pupils with a range of SEN aged 8 upwards. If you would like to use the survey with younger pupils, we recommend looking at the question list and deciding whether you wish to use or adapt it. You can see the full question list here.
The wellbeing survey comprises two sections. The first section asks experiences of bullying behaviours and school experience. These items include:
- eight items related to being a target of bullying (e.g. I am hit, pushed or kicked by other pupils)
- five items about bullying others (e.g. I pick on other pupils), and
- four items related to school experience (e.g. I get on well with teachers).
The second section of the survey explores different aspects of wellbeing (e.g. I cry a lot, I hit out when I am angry).
The results collected are based on the demographics of SEN/Disability status, Free School Meals (FSM), school year, gender, faith and ethicity.
How to complete the ABA online questionnaire
We have tried to make this process as simple as possible while still collecting the information needed to accurately and safely assess wellbeing and bullying in schools.
1. Before you begin, you should seek consent from parents and carers for pupils who are going to be asked to take part in the survey. Let them know what it is for, the kind of questions that will be asked, and that their own child's information will not be specifically identifiable. We have provided a template letter and Data Privacy Notice at the bottom of this page for parents. It explains the questionnaire process, information about the data involved and state that they have a set amount of time to respond if they do not want their child to take part in the survey. We recommend giving at least two weeks for parents and carers to respond to this letter.
2. Prepare pupil data. Export pupil data from your school's MIS (management information system) to an Excel spreadsheet. You might want to ask your school's administrator or IT dept. to do this for you. Don't include pupils whose parents/carers have said they do not wish their child to take part. You can include any data at all in the exported spreadsheet as long as there are columns containing:
- pupil first name
- pupil last name
- pupil ID no. (you can make this up if you don't have one, just keep a record)
- year group
- class
- gender
- free school meal status
- SEN status
- Ethnicity
- Faith
If you do not record any of these characteristics, simply input 'N/A' for each pupil into the relevant column.
The system will exclude the information it doesn't need. Some schools prefer to use false names or codes for pupils. This is fine, but should be managed very carefully to ensure you give the right access code to the right child at each collection. Otherwise, there is a risk that you will not get correct data relating to demographics and school year.
3. Load the information to the platform. In the wellbeing questionnaire section of the platform, click on 'Import pupils' as shown below
Upload the Excel file with your data and you'll see that it immediately appears on the screen.
4. Validate the data. Make sure the information you have uploaded matches what the system needs in order to generate your reports. Different schools' MIS systems will have slightly different headers for each columns, so you need to follow the instructions on the screen to tell the system which column contains what information.
Follow the instructions on the screen and then press 'Submit' once complete. You will see that the screes shows only some of the pupil data that you've uploaded. Be assured that the rest is safely encrypted on the server. It does not need to be shown on the screen and it is better from a privacy perspective if it isn't, so we only show what's needed to allow you to manage the data.
5. Download pupil access keys. Each pupil is given a unique code to complete the questionnaire. This is so the system can identify the answers according to each demographic and year group. Press the 'Download access keys' button to generate a PDF that you can print off and distribute to class teachers and pupils. You have an option to print the keys all together for the whole school, or just by year or class group. We have also made the information available in an Excel sheet in case you are teaching remotely and need to email the keys to the pupils.
6. Distribute access keys. The PDF contains instructions on items to cover for the member of staff who is supporting pupils to undertake the questionnaire. It also has a list of all pupil names and access keys. Then it has individual instruction letters for each pupils. Please note the access keys are confidential and pupil specific. Hence care should be taken at the time of printing and distributing the keys. All these should be gathered and disposed of after use to ensure that no pupils or other person fills in a questionnaire in someone else's name.
7. Pupils complete the questionnaire. Pupils start the questionnaire at www.alltogether.anti-bullyingalliance.org.uk/Pupil. Within the system, they are given support to understand the process and to give informed consent. Once at least 20 pupils have completed the process (this is to ensure that schools cannot identify individual pupils’ answers) schools can start generating anonymous reports based on this data. You can generate your report from your Dashboard. If for any reason a parent/carer or pupil withdraws their consent to take part, the school is expected to delete the pupil(s) accordingly. Upon deletion, all answers submitted by the pupil(s) will be erased from the system.
8. Mark as complete. It is very important that you only do this once you are satisfied that as many pupils as possible have completed the questionnaire.
Completing the questionnaire a second time (Final Pupil Questionnaire)
After you select Option 1, you will see that your data is still in place from last time. You also have an option to import additional pupils if you wish. Just repeat the steps above and these will be added to the pupils who you imported last time.
Pupils taking the questionnaire just use the same link as last time, follwing exactly the same steps. The system will automatically sort their answers into the new report.
The Pupil Questionnaire and Data Protection/GDPR
The Pupil Questionnaire platform has been designed with security at its core and data is processed in accordance with the Data Protection Act 2018, the UK's implementation of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). For full details, please see the Parent Consent Form and Data Privacy Notice below. You can also read NCB's data privacy statement here.