Pupils Lead the Way with Anti-Bullying Award Recognition
Back
As a school, we have been working hard this year to achieve the BIG (Bullying Intervention Group) Award for Excellence in Challenging Bullying, celebrating our commitment to creating a safe, inclusive and supportive environment. This award highlights a proactive approach to preventing and addressing bullying through a range of strategies.
At the heart of these strategies are a team of Peer Mentors, pupils in Year 4, 5 and 6 who lead inclusive games on the playground and provide a listening ear to support other pupils with their worries.
Peer Mentors are supported by a member of our Senior Leadership Team and receive training on active listening skills, questions to ask to support conflict resolution, confidentiality, how to spot and respond to bullying and how to lead inclusive playground games.
All Peer Mentors have a lanyard with the four key questions we ask to support conflict resolution:
- What can I help you with today?
- How are you feeling?
- If other people are involved, how do you think they are feeling?
- What needs to happen to put things right or to make things better in the future?
A member of the Senior Leadership Team meets with the Peer Mentors a couple of times per half term to reflect on the different types of problems and worries they have helped to solve on the playground. They also discuss their ideas for raising awareness events and any other suggestions for how they can make the school a kinder and more inclusive place, delivering a recent pupil-led assembly and planning improvements to the school.
Val McFarlane, Director, Bullying Intervention Group said:
“Norwich Primary Academy is a school where staff, pupils and parents take bullying very seriously. Although bullying can occur in any school, Norwich Primary Academy have a wide range of strategies in place to both prevent and address it. The school has a good, up to date anti-bullying policy, a peer mentoring scheme and staff are trained to identify and address friendship and bullying issues. An anti-bullying focus group meets regularly to discuss these strategies and ensure that their anti bullying work is consistent, with a whole school approach to tackling this issue. I am so pleased to award Norwich Primary Academy with the BIG Award for Excellence in Challenging Bullying.”
All concerns of bullying are dealt with very seriously, with various avenues that children and parents can access to report bullying concerns. All reports are diligently logged and investigated as soon as possible to prevent further escalation.
One of the peer mentors said:
“As a Peer Mentor I am a positive role model and help solve problems. We had training to ask specific questions and learn games to do with the children. I have helped our school to decrease bullying and unkindness. We also did an assembly to make children be more inclusive and kinder.”
The recognition of this award is hugely gratifying for our school, with the recent fantastic Ofsted report that also highlighted that “Pupils are encouraged to make positive choices and manage their own behaviour.” The environment at the school is warm and inviting, “Some pupils say there is no bullying at all. Others say there is some, but staff deal with it really well. As a result, pupils feel safe, happy and are ready to learn.”
The work that goes into creating this open and positive culture has been ultimately recognised in the achievement of this award, and we are continuing to listen to pupil voice to implement changes, remaining committed to providing a place where every child feels safe, valued and heard.
Eleanor Minter, Vice Principal at Norwich Primary Academy said:
"I am delighted that Norwich Primary Academy has achieved the BIG Award for Excellence in Challenging Bullying. I am particularly proud of our Peer Mentors, who make a real difference on the playground and embody our school values of 'Respect, 'Responsibility' and 'Inclusion'. This is just the beginning and planning is already underway for next year's raising awareness events, with a particular focus on how we can further engage parents and carers in our anti-bullying work.”
