Sometimes it feels as if we spend our whole year planning Anti-Bullying Week and it ends up going so quickly it feels like a blur! We think it’s really important at the Anti-Bullying Alliance to think about its impact. Does it help shine a spotlight on bullying in schools and is it a useful undertaking for schools? This blog outlines the reach and impact of Anti-Bullying Week.
What did we do in Anti-Bullying Week 2018?
Anti-Bullying Week 2018 had the theme ‘Choose Respect’. The theme was decided after consultation from 600 pupils and 200 school staff. The aim of the week was to encourage pupils to understand that whilst we might not all be best friends, it’s never an excuse to treat someone without respect or bullying them and that we should always ‘Choose Respect’
To mark the week this year we:
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Produced school packs that included lesson and assembly plans, activity ideas and videos
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Held Odd Socks Day to mark the start of the week and celebrate what makes us all unique. This day was supported by children’s TV star, Andy Day
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Held our first ever ‘Stop Speak Support Day’ on the Thursday of Anti-Bullying Week to highlight the issue of cyberbullying. This day was supported by The Duke of Cambridge and The Royal Cyberbullying Taskforce
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Created a social media campaign and released poll statistics about bullying and the issue of respect in school.
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Held an event in parliament at Speaker’s House
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Held our Anti-Bullying Week School Staff Award
Children are still being bullied
To mark the start of Anti-Bullying Week, we conducted a survey of 1,000 11-16 year olds in England. We found:
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Almost one in five young people said that they were bullied face-to-face at least once a week over the past six months, and
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Over a third of young people have been bullied online over the same period.
Who held Anti-Bullying Week 2018?
To understand the reach and impact of Anti-Bullying Week 2018, we commissioned a poll in December of 500 pupils and 500 teachers in England through Censuswide, a polling company.
We found that an incredible 79% of schools in England that took part in Anti-Bullying Week, reaching 7.5 million pupils in over 19,000 schools. Additionally:
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41% of schools took part in Odd Socks Day, reaching roughly 10,000 school and 3.8 million pupils
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36% of schools held Stop Speak Support Day, reaching roughly 8,700 schools and 3.4 million pupils
Weaving anti-bullying activity into the curriculum is integral to a whole-school anti-bullying plan. So we provided lesson plans and activities to help schools do this in Anti-Bullying Week. In 2018 these school packs produced for primary and secondary schools, were downloaded by 97,000 and 30,000 times respectively.
Do pupils and teachers think Anti-Bullying Week has any impact?
With the startling numbers of pupils affected by bullying it is encouraging to have feedback [from a poll of 500 teachers and 500 pupils by Censuswide] stating that:
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Over 80% of both teachers and pupils agree that Anti-Bullying Week is useful event in the school calendar
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Over 90% of both teachers and pupils agree that Anti-Bullying Week helps raise awareness of bullying
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Over 80% of both teachers and pupils agree that Anti-Bullying Week helps schools tackle bullying
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Nearly 70% of both teachers and pupils agree that Anti-Bullying Week helps to reduce bullying
What was the reach of Anti-Bullying Week in media and social media?
Through the use of Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter we increased our impressions by 160% across all platforms, and engagements by 43% based in comparison to 2017 figures. In addition to this our Stop Speak Support video to highlight the issue of cyberbullying was watched by over 1,300,000 people.
We also had significant impact in TV, radio and news coverage.
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Anti-Bullying Week was featured in over 639 pieces of national, local and regional media coverage, by the likes of BBC, Sky News, the Independent etc.
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Even Niall Horan, from One Direction, tweeted twice about Stop Speak Support Day, was retweeted 9,931 times making 78.6 million impressions, while Yoko Ono tweeted 13 times, was retweeted 8,550 times making 62.3 million impressions.
Our poll stats show that there is more need than ever to continue to hold Anti-Bullying Week and that it is having impact in school.
With increasing participation from schools, media engagement, and promotion among public figures, we will work even harder this year to ensure that Anti-Bullying Week 2019 is even bigger and better and we’d like to thank all of you who helped us ‘unite against bullying’.
