The facts
In Australia, about 25% of Year 4 to 9 students are bullied at least once every few weeks during the school term.i
Traditional anti-bullying strategies are often reactive and focus on the consequences. Mental health challenges can also increase a student’s risk of being bullied. Proactively listening to students about their experiences and wellbeing is one of the most powerful ways we can protect and support them.
To acknowledge the important contributions of educators in preventing and addressing bullying, we’ve pulled together some of the ways that educators continue to promote positive classroom environments that not only promote collaborative learning but also aim to reduce the instances and impacts of bullying in schools.
Promoting strong, positive relationships
At the heart of every supportive and respectful classroom is a network of positive relationships between educators and students, and among peers. Educators know that positive relationships are not just “nice to have”; they are a protective factor against bullying.
Educators are intentionally building trust by showing genuine interest in their students’ lives, being consistent and fair, and creating opportunities for fun shared experiences. Even small moments – greeting students by name at the door, sharing a laugh or checking in after a tough day – are working towards strengthening connection.
Strong educator-student relationships help students feel valued and understood, which increases their willingness to communicate and seek help if something goes wrong. Similarly, when students are encouraged to collaborate, mentor one another, and celebrate team success, they form the kind of peer bonds that make bullying less likely to occur.
Educators are also modelling positive communication, showing students how to listen, express disagreement respectfully, and repair relationships when conflict arises. These micro-lessons in connection build empathy and resilience across the classroom community.
Establishing clear expectations and predictable routines
Consistency and routine in the classroom are key. Educators create clear expectations for behaviour in their teaching environments and reinforce these expectations positively, thereby helping to reduce opportunities for bullying to occur.
Predictable routines and clear classroom agreements, often co-created with students, help everyone understand what respectful behaviour looks like. This predictability provides safety, especially for students who may feel anxious or uncertain.
Educators also model these behaviours daily, demonstrating calm problem-solving and respectful communication even when managing conflict.
Creating a respectful and inclusive classroom environment
Respect and inclusion help shape behaviour, and when consistently modelled and expected, discourages bullying. Studies show that higher levels of school connectedness (i.e. students feeling supported by peers, teachers and the school environment) are prospectively linked with lower risk of depression and anxiety in youth.ii Educator strategies include:
- Shaping the school environment every day through the expectations they set, the relationships they nurture and the values they promote. Educators help create environments where every student feels included and respected.
- Inclusion encourages empathy and understanding. Classrooms that celebrate diversity and encourage curiosity about others’ experiences foster empathy, helping students appreciate different perspectives and backgrounds.
- A strong sense of connection reduces emotional difficulties. When students feel supported by their teachers, peers and school community, they are less likely to experience low mood, anxiety or social isolation and more likely to engage positively in school life.
Strengthening school–home partnerships
Educators know they can’t do this work alone. Strong communication with families supports consistent expectations and shared problem-solving collaboration. Educators regularly update caregivers on classroom values, involve them in discussions about digital safety, and celebrate positive social behaviours, not just academic achievements.
When schools and families work together, students receive clear and consistent messages about kindness and respect.
Using strengths-based language, recognition and restorative practices
Instead of focusing only on what not to do, educators are highlighting what to do, using positive reinforcement to build prosocial behaviour. Recognising acts of kindness, cooperation and courage helps create an environment where inclusion and effort is admired. Many educators use classroom “kindness walls”, weekly reflections or gratitude journals to celebrate positive effort and engagement.
When bullying does occur, many schools are moving away from purely punitive responses and towards restorative practices, where educators guide students to understand the impact of their behaviour, take responsibility, and rebuild trust. This approach doesn’t ignore harm; it helps students repair it while learning valuable social and emotional skills.
Teaching emotion literacy and social and emotional skills
Educators already play a vital role in helping students develop an ability to express their emotions through language and develop lifelong skills through everyday interactions, guidance and modelling. By supporting emotion literacy and social and emotional learning, educators lay the groundwork for engaged and compassionate classroom environments.
Many schools now embed social and emotional learning directly into the curriculum. Educators teach students how to recognise and regulate their emotions, understand others’ perspectives, and resolve conflicts respectfully. In primary settings, educators might use storybooks, role-play or classroom discussions about kindness and feelings. In secondary schools, educators often guide conversations about digital citizenship, relationships and the impact of online behaviour. Empathy education helps students connect their actions to others’ experiences, reducing the likelihood of bullying and increasing prosocial behaviours.
Empowering student voice
Giving students an active voice is one of the most powerful ways educators are reducing bullying and creating inclusive classroom cultures. When students feel heard, respected and involved in shaping their environment, they are far more likely to uphold those same values with one another.
Educators are moving beyond simply asking for opinions; they are embedding student voice into the fabric of classroom and school life. This includes:
- Co-creating classroom agreements so students define what respect, kindness and safety look like in their own words
- Student-led initiatives, such as peer mentoring, wellbeing teams or kindness campaigns, which give young people real ownership over improving their community
- Wellbeing surveys, such as My Mind Check, allowing students to share how they are feeling, and any concerns, with the support of their school.
When students are trusted to contribute, they become more confident advocates for themselves and others. This sense of empowerment helps shift the rhetoric from “teachers stop bullying” to “we all prevent bullying”.
In secondary settings, student voice can extend to shaping digital citizenship policies, developing inclusive leadership programs or mentoring younger students. In primary classrooms, it might mean giving students choice in activities, encouraging them to speak up about fairness or recognising “upstanders” who support peers.
By amplifying student voice, educators help young people see that they play an essential role in building a kind, safe and respectful community – one conversation and one action at a time.
Using proactive student information to inform action
When educators take a proactive approach, schools benefit from information and insights directly from students. This kind of information helps schools move from guesswork to strategic action, enabling them to identify patterns, target interventions, and track progress over time.
Educators observe these behaviours daily. To provide educators with extra confidence, more schools are incorporating student wellbeing and bullying check-ins. Short, regular, evidence-based check-ins help educators assess the emotional climate and pick up on early warning signs of distress or exclusion. Schools can use our free platform to conduct brief 10–15-minute check-ins and gain immediate insights into students’ mental health needs and strengths as well as peer victimisation. Our platform provides practical follow-up resources that assist staff to respond. To find out more about how our check-ins work visit How My Mind Check works.
It’s time to rethink how we address bullying in our schools
By opening up conversations about mental health and wellbeing, educators help build the kind of school environment where bullying struggles to take hold – one grounded in empathy, inclusion and student voice. Their commitment to listening, guiding, and connecting with students is one of the most powerful tools we have in preventing bullying early.
Implementing proactive mental health and wellbeing check-ins and follow-up frameworks in schools is an effective way to help take the burden off educators and help them better identify and address what can be a key sign of bullying before it escalates. When tools like My Mind Check allow educators to get indicators of both mental health risks and experiences of bullying early they have particularly powerful insights.
These check-ins have been proven to help spot the signs early; support young people in need; open up the conversations that matter between schools, families and students; and improve attendance and wellbeing.iii
We should be continually celebrating the impact educators are already having, and recognise that their commitment, compassion and leadership are vital in building better and more supportive schools for all students.
References:
i National Mental Health Commission. School based interventions for bullying prevention. 2024 https://shorturl.at/7T34E
ii BMC Public Health, The role of school connectedness in the prevention of youth depression and anxiety: a systematic review with youth consultation, 2022. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-022-14364-6
iii Macquarie University Lifespan Health and Wellbeing Research Centre, The Brief Evaluation of Adolescents and Children Online (BEACON) project, 2025 – https://shorturl.at/kUA43
