School projects

Carrying out projects in class, or as a school, makes sense if you are trying to find out whether bullying is a problem in your school, or whether your anti-bullying policy is effective.

StatisticsThere are no official statistics for the number of pupils being bullied at any one time in the UK. The only type of bullying which has to be recorded in the UK is racist bullying.

Neither are there any statistics for the number of young people who kill themselves due to distress over bullying. These figures do not have to be officially recorded but it is believed that around 16-20 pupils in the UK commit suicide every year. Some deaths are recorded at inquests as an 'open verdict' meaning there isn't enough evidence for the coroner to decide exactly what happened.

Carry out a surveyBullying UK carried out The National Bullying Survey 2006 and you can find a copy of the comprehensive results in a pdf on our home page.

If you want to find out the extent of bullying in your school, a survey is a good place to start. Pupils should be able to come up with some questions about the things you feel are important at your own school. For instance, you might want to ask if particular areas of school are unsafe.

Before you begin, decide whether the survey is for a particular year group, the whole school or whether parents should be included in it too.

You need to consider what you will do as a follow-up to the survey, anyone who reports bullying, even if it's anonymous, will expect that action will be announced along with the results.

This is a great opportunity to get pupils to be part of updating your existing anti-bullying policy.

Questions you can ask

Have you been bullied in the last year? Are you being bullied now? Are you being bullied by one person or several people? Was the bullying name-calling? Was the bullying excluding you from friendships? Was the bullying violent (hitting, kicking, punching, pushing)? Was the bully threatening to harm you? Was this bullying because of your colour, race or religion? Was the bullying about being gay? Are you being bullied out of school? Are you being bullied on the internet or by mobile phone? Are you being bullied on the way to school Was the bullying by pupils the same age or by those older or younger? Did you tell your parents/carer? Did you tell a friend? Did you tell a teacher?

Did you hit back? Did you stay at home? Did the bullying stop? How many days have you taken off school due to bullying? Have you kept a diary about the problem? If it got better why do you think this was? If it got worse, why do you think this was? Where did bullying happen? Are some areas of school unsafe? Where in school is bullying most likely to happen? Have you seen anyone else being bullied? Have you ever bullied anyone? Why did you bully someone? Do you know if the school has an anti-bullying policy? Do you know what you are supposed to do at school if someone is bullying you?

If you want to publicise your project you could make a prominent display with pupils' pictures, poems and quotes. Perhaps you could put on a play. A gift token or other small prize for the best ones is a good incentive.

If you do a survey and collate the results with the idea of updating your school bullying policy, then think about doing another survey after a year, to see how effective any changes to the policy have been.

Work in classIt isn't always practicable to carry out a full survey without a lot of planning so if you feel that bullying is a problem in class and you want to do some work with a group of children then that's a good idea.

We've used this with groups ranging from very young children to teenagers and it's always interesting and revealing, to them and to us.

Ask the youngsters to call out things which are bullying ie name calling, hitting, taking friends away, and make a list of them on the blackboard. Then ask them to call out words which would describe how this behaviour would make someone being bullied feel. Finally, ask them how they think bullying should be dealt with ie a telling-off, detention etc.

You can use this simple method to reinforce school rules and to explain that telling a teacher or other member of staff is not telling tales but something that everyone should do to make school a safer place.

Differences between girl and boy bullyingBullying UK is often asked what are the most common forms of bullying in secondary schools.

Our experience has shown that boys and girls tend to bully in different ways. Teenage girls are more likely to use exclusion from friendships, rumour spreading, gossip and name calling while boys - although they do indulge in these things - are more likely to punch and kick their victims than girls and to use intimidation.

Girls are the main perpetrators of mobile phone abuse and also on the receiving end of most text message abuse and silent calls.

Girls who are good friends often tell each other their big secrets and when they fall out this sometimes means that the ex-friend posts really embarrassing things about the other girl on the internet. This can be very upsetting but anyone who does this can easily be traced by the police because nothing you do on the internet is secret, your digital fingerprints are all over it, even if you create a name using an account like hotmail or yahoo.

Posting nasty stuff on the internet about someone else, or altering photos of them to make them obscene, can be harassment which is against the law. It's also against the law to use the phone system, which includes the internet, to cause alarm or distress.

There's lots more info about cyber bullying in our special section here .

Other pages in this sectionSchool projects / Professional projects / Working with bullies / Support staff
Internet safety advice / Teachers TV / Adults' survey results / Advice for schools
Working with pupils / Pupils' survey results / Parents' survey results / Teachers' survey results
Working with parents / Cyber bullying introduction / Internet scams / Happy slapping
Abusive websites / Bullying policies / Bullying in sport / National Bullying Survey 2006
Dangerous websites / Mobile phone problems