We have come to the end of an academic year that I think we can safely say is the strangest ever seen. In the first week of schools closing to most pupils we saw the number of school and children’s workforce staff accessing to our free CPD anti-bullying online training rocket up tenfold. Our site crashed and we had to work to update site to ensure we could take the sheer number of people accessing it. I was thinking about this the other day and something struck me. At one of the scariest times in our lives the first instinct of school and children’s workforce staff up and down the country was to think about what they could to utilise this time to ‘upskill’ themselves to ultimately protect the wellbeing and safety of children and young people.

Pupils will be returning to schools in September having had many different experiences. Many will have been shielded from the worries we have and will have perhaps had a nice break and be raring to get going again. But many children will have had a really difficult time at home and struggled to stay connected to friends and learning. Some will be worried about returning and perhaps worried about bullying that they may have been experiencing. It’s a difficult time and there are challenges ahead but ABA and our members will be here to provide a helping anti-bullying hand. We will be providing you with Anti-Bullying Week tools and resources that will be applicable to both school and online settings. Our free All Together whole-school programme is open to new schools so sign up today and, of course, our free CPD online training remains available over the summer break.

We hope you are all able to have a restful summer where you can and thank you for everything you continue to do.

The ABA Team