Queensland students Stand Up for Respect
Thursday, 5 Sep 2024
Woongoolba State School captain Ava might be a school leader, but she says no one is immune to bullying.
A couple of years ago, someone was saying really mean things to me online and I told my parents about it straight away and it got sorted.
My parents told the school, and the school sorted it out. My heart wasn’t completely fixed up after it stopped. It took a while to get over it.
My parents told the school, and the school sorted it out. My heart wasn’t completely fixed up after it stopped. It took a while to get over it.
Ava is now standing tall. The year 6 student and her peers were among 550 students from eight southeast Queensland primary schools to benefit from a new evidenced-based bullying prevention program by children’s charity Life Ed Queensland.
Stand Up for Respect was developed in partnership with Social Marketing Griffith University who are currently evaluating the program’s impact, with a report due in October. Preliminary results show a significant reduction in rates of bullying perpetration and cyberbullying, and an increase in confidence among students to report bullying and to take action to support their peers.
What is Stand Up for Respect?
Employing a raft of program initiatives including face-to-face lessons, lunchtime playground activities and seminars for parents and teachers, the program delivered by Life Ed Queensland aims to upskill students in upper primary school – years 5 and 6 – giving them the tools to recognise bullying, act and reduce bullying rates in their school communities.
The program is reaching its mark, according to surveys of almost 300 students from four schools in the final pilot evaluation. At the start of the program, 11.84% of students had reported being physically hurt by other students every week or even daily. At the end of the Stand Up for Respect pilot, there had been a 56% reduction in physical harm to 5.17% of students.
There was a similar decrease in cyberbullying, with the number of students experiencing hurtful comments online every week or more frequently, reducing by 53%.
Life Ed Queensland also saw a significant improvement in the confidence of students to take action to prevent or report bullying.
- 66.8% are confident to recognise bullying behaviours (52.2% previously)
- 67.6% of students are now confident to ask for help, compared to 57.3% before the program
- 53.9% are confident to take action to prevent bullying (previously 43.1%)
- 40.7% are confident to know how to reduce bullying at their school, compared to only 26.1% prior to the program
