Be an upstander. Not a bystander.

Anti-Bullying Week, an annual campaign taking place from 11–15 November this year, is coordinated by the UK based Anti-Bullying Alliance (ABA), and it is expected to reach over 7.5 million children across England, Wales, and Northern Ireland. Along with the UK, St George’s International School here in Luxembourg offers an education underpinned by the National Curriculum for England by using ABA resources throughout the year and participating annually in Anti-Bullying Week.

Zeba Clarke, recently appointed Principal of St George’s International school, spoke with Family Matters about the school's participation in the campaign and on fostering an inclusive environment.

“Kindness and respect are two of the most critical values that we really need to be sharing with children and making sure they understand what they mean, how we embody them, and how we act them out. This is at the foundation of solid education. That’s really important” said Clarke.
 

St George’s new Principal

Clarke took the helm as Principal of St George’s International School in September 2024, bringing more than 30 years of experience in education from the UK, Brussels, and Brazil. Prior to joining St George's, Clarke was deputy head of St. Paul’s School in São Paulo for three years. St. Paul's is a private British school which follows the International Baccalaureate (IB) curriculum.

"When I first started teaching, there was little to no attention paid to child on child abuse and relationships to safeguarding, this has really transformed during my career and that has been a real joy." Clarke explained.

At her previous school, Clarke was a safeguarding officer, a person who is in charge of children's health, wellbeing, and rights. She was also heavily involved in peer mentoring, and therefore she feels passionately about every child feeling protected and safe. She emphasises the importance of kindness, making sure everyone is looking out for each other and to stop others from being unkind – something Clarke recognises takes great courage.

Schools are striving to be much kinder places for children and staff, and Clarke has seen this evolve during her time in education. In situations where a child is a perpetrator, very often there is a whole complex set of issues behind their actions and for Clarke, the focus has to be on inclusivity across the entire school community.

“Children who do bullying actions or are bystanders, they need those conversations more than anybody” Zeba Clarke said.

“Right through until children are quite mature, age 17 or 18, things can erupt and they come out with things, quite often it doesn’t have anything to do with anybody else in the classroom, its what is going on in their particular world.” Clarke continued. 

2024 Anti-Bullying Week

'Choose Respect'

During Anti-bullying Week, ‘Odd Socks Day’ will be celebrated on Tuesday 12th November. ABA Patron Andy Dolan of Cbeebies fame and his band ‘Andy and the Odd Socks’ produced a toe-tapping song, "Choose Respect" in line with this years campaign title. Participation extends beyond schools with the ABA providing a workplace pack should adults wish to get involved. In 2023, over 5 million children, 1,000s of parents, 100’s of workplaces and lots of celebrities and influencers got involved in Odd Socks Day.
 
The serious message is, let’s pull on odd socks to show we’re all unique and different, let's be kind to each other and respect each other’s individuality. The song and school resources aim to get everyone talking.

“I really like this years slogan ‘Choose Respect’ it’s short sharp and clear and really emphasises the fact that one of the key pieces of education is helping children understand that we have a choice, we are in charge, we have agency over how we treat other people.” Clarke stated.

Annual campaigns can help raise the profile of important issues although social wellbeing and conflict resolution should always be high on the agenda. To champion kindness in the day-to-day lives of students is something that St George’s embeds within its core school values. The school will celebrate Odds Socks Day and activities will take place through the student council in primary, student parliament in secondary, and the inclusion and equality committees. Clarke will be delivering assemblies to the secondary school and doing some work with primary during the week.

Anti-Bullying Alliance 

"Imagine a world where respect and kindness thrive and children are free from bullying – it’s not just a dream, it's in the choices we make. Let's come together this Anti-Bullying Week and commit to always choosing respect", Maria Evans, Director of the Anti-Bullying Alliance.
 
The ABA provides expertise in relation to all forms of bullying between children and young people. Established in 2002 by the NSPCC and the National Children's Bureau, the ABA is a unique coalition of organisations and individuals operating under three main areas of work to achieve their vision; stop bullying and create safer environments in which children and young people can live, grow, play, and learn.

Main areas of work:

• Supporting learning and sharing best practice through membership
• Raising awareness of bullying through Anti-Bullying Week and other coordinated campaigns
• Delivering programme work at a national and local level to help stop bullying and bring lasting change to children's lives. 

Their most recent programme was launched in June 2024, 'Belonging Matters' across 10 schools in London. This pilot programme is intended for mainstream schools, special schools, and Alternative Provision, across both primary and secondary, to support schools to develop and enhance their universal offer of inclusive education. Its underpinned by research evaluating the key components of 'belonging' and their influence on student outcomes. It aims to benefit all students although particularly disabled students and those with special education needs (SEN).

The AGA run many programmes and campaigns, some are specific to the UK, however, they provide a wealth of transferable resources, recommendations, training materials, and more.

ABA at St George's School

Clarke speaks highly of the ABA and has used their resources in every school she has worked in over the last 10 years such as during PSHE and when celebrating Anti-Bullying Week. During assemblies this week, Clarke will reinforce the meaning behind the 2024 campaign title, 'Choose Respect'.

"I'm looking at the school values with students, courage, kindness, being inclusive, how do we embody this day in day out and make sure this is absolutely embedded our hearts and in our thinking", Clarke added.
 
Programmes for inclusion

St Georges school recently recruited a DEIJ (Diversity Equity Inclusion and Justice) co-ordinator, Michael Neuman, to lead sessions around inclusion across different years groups.

Will Alwyard, an SEN support staff member at St George runs the 'Humanutopia Heroes' initiative which targets students ages 11 to 14. Older students from years 10 and 11 are paired up with younger students in years 7, 8 and 9 to help with the transition from primary into secondary. Part of the programme is delivering lessons and assemblies on social well-being, relating to others and supporting each other.

"If you look at all the statistics, ages 11 to 14 are the peak years for bullying, child on child violence and acts of unkindness. Humanutopia run various initiatives, for example, eating lunch with the younger students, playing games and chatting together", Clarke explained.

The school is exploring more peer mentoring in the near future, something Clarke is passionate about. She highly recommends Anna Freud peer support programme resources.

"The Anna Freud Centre in the UK have great materials to help children understand how to be a good peer mentor and how to use the mechanisms within the school to bring issues to peoples attention, if students feel adults should be made aware", explained Clarke.

Clarke attributes great importance to ensuring student mentors being adequately supported and protected , as they can be privy to serious disclosures. She values little acts of kindness and recently, some year 6 students made soup with left over vegetables and donated this to a homeless shelter. Students came up with the idea themselves supported by the school sustainability team.

"Being at St George's, it’s one of the most open minded and generous schools – teaching staff are committed. It’s about fostering these acts of kindness", Clarke said.

Alongsde ABA materials, St George's use materials to support inclusion and social wellbeing from a number of smaller NGO’s.

"Plus teachers really drive programmes right through the school, its really embedded, its all about that sense of inclusion and community, to feel protected and safe", Clarke explained.

The rise of technology 

Findings from a recent study by the WHO in March 2024, suggests that across Europe, one in six school-aged children, around 15% of adolescents, experiences cyberbullying. This represents an increase from 2018, from 12% to 15% for boys and 13% to 16% for girls.

Social media platforms have unfortunately become fertile grounds for online harassment and cyberbullying. It can be insidious and despite proactive steps by schools, cyberbullying can reach anyone even in the safety of their own home. The immediate effects on mental health are severe and wide-ranging and the magnitude is reflected in cyberbullying being a legal offense.

In July 2023, The Luxembourg Education Ministry launched the campaign 'Not Sharing is Caring' to help tackle the rise of virtual violence, highlighting the significance of filming and sharing violent content online – or more importantly – the importance of not sharing it. Online resources are available for young people to discourage them from joining the herd and to instead feel confident reporting it.

"For me, mobile phones have become the primary vehicle for child on child abuse and it’s so important to prevent the use of mobiles in school", Clarke said.

Mobile phone ban

In September 2024, Claude Meisch, Education Minister announced a ban on mobile phones in primary schools based on the detrimental effects of excessive smartphone use among children. The International School of Luxembourg has had a no phone policy across grades 6 to 12 since 2022. The Lycée Ermesinde in Mersch has banned smartphones since September 2023 and students have to put their mobile phones in a box in the morning to pick them up again at the end of the school day.

At St Georges, students are encouraged to put phones away before they enter school grounds. The school recently introduced a social media detox challenge for students, see more on our article here. Clarke has witnessed firsthand the benefits of banning mobile phones in school in relation to bullying and acts of unkindness.

"In my previous school, we introduced a gate to gate ban on mobile phones and as a result, incidences of child on child abuse in school absolutely plummeted", Clarke said.

"Prior to the ban, the incidences were pretty regular, students might sneak off somewhere and pull out their phones and send nasty messages to each other, pretty grim", she continued.
 
Support for parents

What can be more difficult to control, is what happens outside of the school gates, something that is far more complex and the support of parents can be invaluable.

"I absolutely feel parents need support on this speaking as a parent myself of two boys, who are in many ways young men, I’m still very conscious about it", Clarke said.

"They are in the midst of that generation where concentration has collapsed, focus has collapsed, and what is interesting is we are now really getting the data from psychologists and neurologists about the impact." she continued.

Clarke has previously encouraged support for parents at school around technology, about the use of mobile phones, do they have parental controls, are parents aware of what their children have access to. Something they are currently considering at St George's.

"Our children are not angels and how do you talk to a child when they have misused technology in one way or another?" Clarke stated.

Clarke highlighted the range in parental awareness from the tech savvy who maintain dialogue with their children to those who have no clue of the power they are providing to their child.

"An iPhone, for example, is over €1,000 of kit, you are handing over this machine which has infinite capacity and infinite capability and children will use it for good but mainly for bad, if you are not investing the time in talking to your child about it", she said.

Digital support for students

Digitial Education is high on the agenda at St George's not only through Computing but PSHE and other subject lessons. Clarke suggests English can be a helpful subject for generating discussions, being able to address issues after reading a book, for example.

Managing incidences

At St George's, low level behaviour incidents are logged and tracked to establish if it was a one off moment of madness or if a pattern is building up. If the latter, a range of steps and escalation scales are put in place as well as support for any child involved in a particular incident.
 
Clarke stated that children who are being bullied do not always know how to respond, which can make the situation more difficult. Children need to develop coping strategies and some children may find situations more challenging. As a parent of a child with ADHD, Clarke understands the complexities concerning neurodivergent children.

"Its also about tolerance, we have to be tolerant and if you are looking at children who are neurodiverse, the impulse control isn't there and I speak from experience. My eldest son has ADHD as a young person and as a teenager in particular, all of the risk taking, impulse control, neurologically it all seemed much more extreme," Clarke explained.

"Its also giving children self-knowledge, how we as a community look out for each other and when we see someone who is struggling whether its their impulses or someone else being unkind to them, just be there to say its alright. Lets find a way to resolve this particular issue." Clarke said.

"The kinder we are, the more we are looking after our own mental health, too", she added.
 
STOP – Several Times On Purpose

For serious continuous bullying, Clarke has applied the STOP acronym in various schools - Several Times On Purpose. It has a double edged meaning and the message for those experiencing it, is to tell someone as soon as possible.

Relationship issues are inevitable and Clarke states that one of the most important purposes of school is to help children navigate relationships. She explained that with very young children, issues arise which can be dealt with immediately and a restorative environment is created.

What Clarke deems to be much more complex, is the pre-puberty phase.

"It's more difficult between ages 8 and 13 or 14, depending on maturity levels and when the hormonal changes begin. Our understanding of that is really important."

Clarke continued;

"Schools are picking up from neurologists from psychologists about the nature of adolescence and then we share that with parents - one of the key things is to say to everybody is this is natural – your feelings of insecurity are normal and students become hyper sensitive about how their peers see them."

Self-consciousness can drive a lot of friendship crisis'. It is normal for relationships to breakdown and within St Georges anti bullying policy, they try to distinguish between a relationship that has broken down and friendship issues versus bullying.

"I saw one talk from a psychologist who said even if they intellectually know it isn’t true, there is something visceral inside of them that makes them feel everyone is watching – if they fall over everyone will laugh." Clarke continued.

Clarke suggests that through training and experience, teachers develop a radar, even when concentrating on one student or a group of students, the teacher knows what is going on in all areas of the classroom.
 
"It's not always easy but there is a lot of help out there in how we can do it and how we can build resilience so children can step up, say when something is wrong and be an upstander."