Bullying behaviour harms children and their educational and life outcomes. Bullying is not new and is an issue that all schools face.
About Kia Kaha
Kia Kaha consists of a comprehensive range of anti-bullying resources to help children and young people learn and apply a range of safe practices that they can use to build and maintain successful relationships throughout their lives.
The New Zealand Police recommends that learning activities in Kia Kaha operate within a whole-school approach as described on the Bullying-Free NZ website:
- Download Bullying-Free NZ's whole school approach roadmap3 [69 KB, PNG]
- See a full explanation of each step of the roadmap: www.bullyingfree.nz/preventing-bullying/planning-to-prevent-bullying-within-a-whole-school-approach/
How teachers can support Kia Kaha
Teachers are strongly encouraged to support Kia Kaha through:
- considering their attitudes and values towards bullying
- understanding the importance of addressing bullying as part of a broad and balanced curriculum
- increasing their understanding about bullying and the use of effective pedagogies
- encouraging the principal to establish and regularly review a bullying policy with explicit prevention and response procedures as described on the Bullying-Free NZ website developed by the cross-agency Bullying Prevention Advisory Group.
- using school data to provide context for lesson content. Data can be generated through Wellbeing@school student surveys.
Data gathering
Gathering data, especially from students, is important to determine the level and type of bullying that occurs, whether existing efforts are working, and get a full picture of what’s going on, rather than rely on how things appear on the surface. Data can be used to suggest particular areas of focus to prevent harm, and to provide a baseline for monitoring outcomes over time.
Police recommend the Wellbeing@school surveys as a useful tool to gather and analyse school data about bullying (the Ministry of Education has announced this tool will be free of charge until the end of 2018).
Kia Kaha resources
A range of resources is provided for teachers as part of Kia Kaha. These resources include:
- an implementation booklet (PDF, 1.4MB)
- a comprehensive range of curriculum-linked, age-appropriate and evaluated learning activities:
- School Community Officers (formerly called Police Education Officers) to support a parent evening, staff (PLD) workshop, and the occasional classroom lesson
- additional audio-visual teaching resources that are referenced in the learning activities are available from the School Community Officers
- the pamphlet Kia Kaha: Your community must stand strong against bullying (PDF, 789KB) which describes the Kia Kaha programme.
Bullying-Free NZ resources
Police also recommend using teaching activities from the school activity pack, which although developed for Bullying-Free NZ Week, can be used at any time of the year. It contains:
The 2018 school activity pack includes the following:
- Activities and initiatives that can be used with multiple age and class levels. These are designed to explore what bullying is, the types of bullying, and the feelings involved in a bullying incident; plus to help students think about who they can turn to for support. Schools can pick and choose the activities that will work best for them and their students. Each activity can be used as a stand-alone short task, or schools can combine several for a longer session.
- A competition for schools, where students create, develop and promote bullying prevention messages through creative media, in line with this year’s theme Let’s Talk About It! Closing date for competition entries is 1 June 2018 (following Bullying-Free NZ Week).
- Information for schools on media releases, developing polices, professional development ideas, a ‘whole school approach’ framework, and a catalogue of what’s in the Bullying-Free NZ school toolkit.