To ask the Minister of Education whether he is considering any actions to enable the Department to better track the (i) level of bullying incidents in schools; and (ii) trends of bullying incidents to support schools with interventions.

Officials are progressing work on a number of fronts with a view to ensuring the Department has access to comprehensive data to better understand the frequency, motivations and methods of bullying type behaviour (BTB).

The Department has included a range of questions in relation to bullying type behaviour or the first time in the 2024 School Omnibus Survey including questions in relation to BTB methods and motivations.

Officials have also engaged with the ETI to ensure the inclusion of questions as part of a wider ETI pilot from September – December 2024, to help determine how schools are fulfilling their statutory obligations in relation to implementing the Act, in terms of recording of all incidents of bullying, development, implementation, monitoring and review of Addressing-Bullying policies and procedures.

Schools are presently required to complete a Bullying Concern Assessment Form (BCAF) on the School Information Management System (SIMS) for each incident of BTB. The BCAF records statutorily required data, however presently this data cannot be collated or anonymised. The BCAF is being digitised as part of the Education Information Solutions (EdIS) digital change programme. The Department is starting to explore with the EA whether there is potential for accessing anonymised regional data resulting from the digitisation of the BCAF.

The Department has worked closely with the EA’s Addressing Bullying in Schools Implementation Team (ABSIT) in order to recently introduce an outcome based reporting approach which will see ABSIT providing the Department with termly reports in relation to the referrals they deal, the training they undertake and the associated outcomes for both.

I also fully recognise the benefit of completing a new externally commission research study in order to gather valuable, up to date data on the nature and prevalence of bullying type behaviour. I will consider the scope to commission this research within the context of the Department’s overall final budget allocation.