Last year, we took part in the United Against Bullying Programme which is being led by the Anti Bullying Alliance.
We are very proud to be able to say that we achieved the Silver Award Status. For context, 217 schools completed the programme with 4% achieving Gold, 32% Silver, 49% Bronze and 15% a certificate of participation.
We started this process by completing a pupil survey. The questions given to children centred around how they feel about coming to school; whether they feel safe and comfortable when in school; their relationships with their peers and their behaviour towards others. It also asked about some outside factors such as whether the child sleeps well at home.
Children were asked a series of questions and answered using the scale:
Always, a lot, a little, never.
There were many clear positives from the survey. Children at Menston Primary do not feel that they are hit, pushed or kicked in school. Nor do they experience frequent name calling. No children reported being stopped from joining in with activities in school and no children reported any issues with online bullying or people being unkind to them online. This shows that we have an environment where positive play is able to take place and children feel secure in their relationships with their peers.
There were, however, some areas which need to be addressed. A very small number of children reported not feeling calm in school or like they belong. A small number of children also reported that they only feel ‘a little’ safe in school.
We have now developed an action plan in response to the findings of the survey. We also reviewed our anti-bullying policy.
As a result of the work around this action plan, we were able to repeat the survey and we were very pleased to see lots of improvements.
We continue to develop our play leaders, house captains, school council and year 5 buddies in order to help strengthen peer support in school.
All staff also participate in Anti-Bullying training as part of their induction to Menston Primary School.
We are dedicated to supporting children and families with their mental health and well-being. Please looks at this page on our website for further information.
In the meantime, if you do have any concerns regarding bullying, please follow the procedures outlined in our current policy. This can be found by clicking the ‘Key Info’ tab and then selecting ‘policies.’ There are also lots of sources of help and support. Here are some which you may find useful:
