United Against Bullying programme - consent needed

The Bulmershe School is taking part in the United Against Bullying anti-bullying programme provided by the Anti-Bullying Alliance (ABA). ABA is part of the National Children’s Bureau (NCB) and works to reduce bullying in schools.

In order to make sure that we are doing all we can to prevent and reduce bullying and to improve pupil wellbeing, we want to find out the levels of bullying in our school and to find out how our pupils feel about school. For this reason, we need your consent to invite your child to complete an anonymous survey in January. The survey will be an online survey which should take about 15 minutes to complete. The answers your child gives to the questionnaire will not be seen by their friends, teachers or you, unless your child chooses an adult to help them complete the questionnaire.

We will then ask pupils to complete the questionnaire again in the Summer Term to see if the changes made have had an impact. 

As we will be working with the ABA on a predesigned questionnaire we require permission to use the data collected. Please can you fill in the google form to give your child permission to complete the study. Deadline for consent is 18th December 2022.

Click here to complete the CONSENT FORM

All information collected will be kept confidential and will be encrypted and carefully stored on a secure system held by ABA/NCB in accordance with the UK GDPR (Data Protection Act 2018 - “DPA” and EU Directive 2016/680 and Regulation EU/2016/679 – The General Data Protection Regulation “EU GDPR”): Neither schools, nor the ABA/NCB will ever have access to pupils’ individual completed questionnaires – only year group or whole year reports which contain anonymous information.

If you give consent for your child to participate, completing the survey is still up to them. Please be reassured that you or your child choosing not to take part in the survey will not disadvantage you or your child in any way. If you decide you would like your child to take part you are still free to withdraw your child from the programme at any time and without giving a reason; simply let the school know that you do not wish them to participate. Even if you decide this after they have already taken part, we are able to delete their survey responses from the system.

Mrs Ambrose will receive an anonymised report of the survey findings for the whole year group that will help them review and support pupil wellbeing. Your child’s responses will help shape the approaches we use as a school when trying to prevent and tackle bullying. For example, it will help us to make sure that the school’s anti-bullying policy covers all the important areas that concern children in our school. By asking these questions, pupils will also know we take incidents of bullying seriously as a school and that we care about our pupils’ wellbeing.

If you are unsure about whether you would like your child to take part and you have some questions about the survey, you are welcome to contact Mrs Ambrose