March 17, 2025
Fostering a school culture against bullying: the KiVa Programme
Bullying is an extremely important public mental health risk. Around one in five primary school children report being bullied at least weekly. Children who are bullied are more likely to experience depression and anxiety, and are at heightened risk of mental health issues in adolescence and adulthood. Whilst schools in England and Wales are required to have anti-bullying policies, rates of bullying remain high. Bullying is preventable, but schools need more help to tackle it. Typically, school policies focus on how to handle bullying once it happens. However, evidence suggests that a comprehensive approach involving the entire school to prevent bullying, alongside clear strategies for addressing confirmed cases, is the most effective way to tackle the issue.
KiVa is one such whole-school approach, developed in Finland by Professor Christina Samivalli. A large study in Finland which involved 28,000 primary school pupils found that adopting the KiVa programme in Finnish schools significantly reduced bullying and improved children's mental wellbeing. The programme has since been rolled out nationally by the Finnish government and ongoing use of KiVa in Finnish schools is associated with year-on-year incremental reductions in bullying.
Along with colleagues, our researcher of the month, Professor Judy Hutchings OBE, has tested the effectiveness of the KiVa Programme in UK primary schools. The study involved over 11,000 children in Wales, Birmingham, Oxfordshire and Devon, and showed a 13% reduction in reported rates of bullying when compared with existing school approaches to tackle bullying.
Summary
KiVa is based on the social architecture model of bullying, which highlights the crucial role that bystanders play in either supporting or opposing bullying. For those who bully, the motivation often lies in seeking visibility, power and higher status within their peer group. As such, they depend on bystanders or spectators. These bystanders can play various roles in the bullying dynamic. Some may unknowingly encourage the bully through verbal or nonverbal signals that reward their behaviour, making bullying seem acceptable or even amusing. Others may actively join in the bullying, even if they don't initiate it themselves. Some peers are silent observers, passively watching without realising that their lack of response could be interpreted as approval of the bully’s actions. In general, very few students who witness bullying feel able to intervene or stand up for the victim.
The KiVa programme focuses heavily on the behaviour of all children. This is because evidence strongly shows that rates of bullying are impacted by the behaviour of everyone, not just perpetrators. When schools focus on the whole school culture, creating a sense of belonging, fostering positive relationships between children and celebrating diversity, bullying levels are likely to reduce. The programme aims to change bystander behaviour towards helping victims, stopping bullying being a way for perpetrators to gain social status.
With the KiVa programme, students receive a 45 minute lesson every two weeks for the whole school year, which involve presentations, role play and group work. These lessons focus on creating a positive school environment and teaching children how to recognise and stand up against various forms of bullying. Additionally, children can access educational online games to play both at school and at home.
Staff members receive training, including scripted strategies to address incidents of bullying. The programme includes clear interventive actions and solution-focused tools targeted specifically to the children and adolescents who have been involved in bullying. It identifies nine different kinds of bullying, including cyberbullying, all of which have been found to reduce in schools using KiVa. The universal element of KiVa has been mapped onto the PSHE curriculum the lesson content covers 50% of the current primary school curriculum.
If bullying is identified, the victim is interviewed to establish as much as possible about the incident/s, including the people involved and the nature of the bullying. This is followed by a discussion with the bullied child about how they will be supported where they are asked which of their peers joined in and which didn’t. Class teachers then speak to the children who didn’t join in, encouraging them to provide support, by chatting to the child who has been bullied or inviting them to play. The perpetrators are interviewed individually, using a ‘no blame’ approach, which studies have shown to be effective. Children are not accused of bullying. Instead, a teacher might say, “XXX has been having a bit of trouble with children taking her school bag and hiding it / with people calling her names”. The child is then asked how, as a pupil in a KiVa school, they will help to solve the problem. They must commit to doing something to help, such as saying good morning, or inviting the child to join in a game. These actions are documented. Two weeks later, the situation is reviewed. The process focuses on what the child or children can do differently and facilitates reflection rather than focusing on discipline or consequences.
The trial showed a 13% reduction in reported victimisation after one year for those pupils on the Kiva trial as compared to those in schools with their usual policies. It also showed that children in the KiVa schools reported higher levels of empathy and reduced peer problems.
Implications
So what does this mean for schools keen to implement effective anti-bullying measures?
Interested schools can find out more about KiVa via the Children’s Early Intervention Trust website. If you'd like to see some videos showing KiVa in action, watch here. You can also watch an interview with Professor Hutchings on ITV news here. You can also tune into our podcast interview with Professor Hutchings here if you are a Tooled Up subscriber, or here if you aren't.
Effective anti-bullying measures require a strong school culture. The whole school needs to be on board, including the senior leadership team. All staff, children and parents need to understand the definition of bullying, and the response to bullying behaviour needs to be consistent across the whole school and embedded into everyday life and learning.
Building a supportive classroom is key. Focus on exploring the benefits and value of being friendly and supporting others for the whole community.
Talk openly about the role that everyone plays in bullying. It's important for children to learn that bullying is not only about one perpetrator and one victim. It's about the whole class, and it is the behaviour of everyone that impacts on whether bullying is tolerated.
Parents should understand how bullying differs from peer disagreements. There is a guide for all parents freely available on the KiVa website. It offers information about bullying including what is known from current research and what can be done at home and at school.
Teach children a range of options when it comes to standing up to bullying. Whilst it is sometimes possible to challenge bullying immediately and directly, this is not always the case. Other options explored during KiVa lessons include being friendly, inviting someone to join in a game, and showing support to someone who is being bullied outside of the bullying situation. Speaking to a trusted adult is highlighted. Within the KiVa programme, all adults working directly with children, including non-teaching staff, are taught the definition of bullying.
Professor Judy Hutchings OBE
Director of the Centre for Evidence based Early Intervention, Bangor University
Since the 1980s, Professor Hutchings has developed, researched and published extensively on parenting programmes, targeting parents of young, mainly preschool, children with a focus on addressing social
disadvantage. Her work has been pragmatic, working with the staff of statutory and voluntary agencies as a consultant clinical psychologist within the NHS and a researcher in academia. Professor Hutchings worked with the Westminster Government through the 2000s supporting the Sure Start initiative and contributing to Cabinet office discussions. She has worked with schools evaluating social emotional programmes for universal and targeted populations, the most recent of which was a successful randomised controlled trial of the Finnish KiVa antibullying programme with 11000 children. Her current parenting work includes three small trials of Books Together, a dialogic reading programme for parents and school-based staff with 3-5 year olds that successfully promotes children’s language skills and school readiness, and international work with UNICEF to support parenting in global south countries.
Professor Judy Hutchings OBE
Director of the Centre for Evidence based Early Intervention, Bangor University
Related Resources
Scroll our research gallery
Feb 12, 2025
When is the right age? Searching for age-appropriate ways to support children's online lives
Currently, children's and young people’s use of digital technology is rarely out of the news. Age limits are debated. Calls for stronger limits are made, and questions are raised regarding whether society should ban 'under-age' children from various aspects of the digital world. 13 years of age is often cited as a digital 'age of consent', though this varies in some countries. Commonly used age limits are largely arbitrary, based primarily on US legislation, rather than evidence. In a recent paper, our researcher of the month, Dr Kim Sylwander, and her co-author Professor Sonia Livingstone, consider age milestones and evaluate whether or not the evidence supports them. Are age limits the optimal way to regulate children’s digital experiences? Does it matter that they are widely contested and often poorly implemented? And are common boundaries even the “right” age, according to evidence from the field of children and digital media? Dr Sylwander persuasively argues that moving forward, a developmental approach can better support children’s rights.
Jan 14, 2025
Showing faith and trust in children nurtures integrity
A new study which explores the development of trust and integrity in children has found that expressing trust in young children encourages them to behave honesty. The research team, including our researcher of the month, Professor Li Zhao, studied whether children were less likely to cheat in a simple test of counting accuracy if the adult administering the test had previously conveyed trust in them. They found that children who were trusted cheated less than those who were not trusted. These findings provide novel evidence about the causal effect of trust on the development of children's honesty.
Dec 17, 2024
Intrinsic reward and word learning
From infancy onwards, humans display an innate motivation to acquire language and to communicate. We start acquiring words as babies and continue to do so throughout our lives. In fact, children are thought to learn over 3000 new words each year. However, relatively little work has focused on why we are motivated to learn words, particularly when it comes to adolescents. Adolescence is a period of great neurological change and sensitivity to learning. It's also marked by changes in reading behaviours. Whilst children become skilled readers between the ages of 10 and 18, this period is also associated with motivational changes in reading, with teens frequently showing a disinclination to read for pleasure. This change often coincides with the transition from primary to secondary school. Policy makers are keen to motivate adolescents to read for pleasure, arguing that it would improve not just literacy outcomes, but also result in substantial economic and societal benefit. Recent research has shown that adults find learning words to be intrinsically rewarding, and that this intrinsic reward facilitates the entrance of new words into long-term memory. Our researchers of the month, Professor Saloni Krishnan and Professor Pablo Ripollés, set out to establish whether the same is true for children and teens.
Nov 14, 2024
Delivering effective menstrual education
Research has shown that menstruation and menstrual cycle symptoms can be disruptive and detrimental to physical, mental and social wellbeing. As many as 93% of teen girls experience dysmenorrhea (severe cramps) and girls with a typical cycle experience 11 menstrual cycle-related symptoms on average, potentially including mood changes, stomach cramps and increased levels of anxiety and fatigue. Adolescents with problematic symptoms have reported a negative impact on school attendance, behaviour, confidence around peers and participation in physical activity. In the United Kingdom, evidence suggests that menstrual health education delivered by teachers generally focuses on menstrual cycle biology, as opposed to management of menstruation and menstrual cycle related symptoms. Our latest researcher of the month, Dr Natalie Brown, set out to understand young people’s perceptions of menstrual education in schools and their experiences of menstruating whilst at school, including within physical education. Her study involved nine focus groups with 10-15 year old female pupils attending primary and secondary schools across England and Wales. Pupils highlighted that, in their experience, menstrual education is limited and noted that the menstrual cycle impacts negatively on their school experience, affecting participation in sport and school attendance generally. Participants highlighted a need for more support and information regarding understanding and managing periods in school.
Oct 17, 2024
How influential is social media on young people's mental health?
A significant body of evidence tells us that young people's mental health has decreased over time, and a potential link between social media use and this mental health decline has triggered wide interest and concern. Research into social media use and mental health is being conducted at a rapid pace but, so far, findings are far from conclusive. Our new Researcher of the Month, Dr Margarita Panayiotou, adds to this body of work. She led a team of researchers who recently published a study involving thousands of young people in the UK. It set out to explore the interplay between social media use and teens' mental health, wellbeing and social life, and found that when considering the complex combination of multiple factors, things such as a lack of family support are arguably more important for adolescent mental health than social media use.
Sep 16, 2024
How do young children’s relationships with parents and teachers impact their adjustment to school?
We already know that children's relationships with their parents and teachers contribute to their school adjustment and achievement, and that positive, close relationships with adults are really important for a wide variety of children’s outcomes. However, few studies have examined interactions between these relationships or sought to address the nuances of children’s experiences in terms of how different relationships have different impact or influence. To address this, along with colleagues, our new Researcher of the Month, Dr Caoimhe Dempsey, has recently published an article which aims to examine the links between children's relationships with their mothers, fathers and teachers, and three domains of school adjustment: academic achievement, academic self-concept and behavioural adjustment in the classroom. By examining a range of data, the researchers sought to find out whether some children are more susceptible to the effects of the quality of their relationship with their teacher.
Aug 19, 2024
Supporting children's transition to secondary school
Supporting children to successfully transition from primary to secondary or senior school is vitally important. It's a big life change, which can leave both parents and children feeling excited and nervous in equal measure. At Tooled Up, we often use the analogy of a journey for the transitional experience. In fact, anyone who has attended or watched a talk with our founder, Dr Kathy Weston, is likely to have heard her say that we'd all want our children to be well prepared for any journey they go on, and that, as loving parents and carers, we wouldn't dream of sending them off on any journey without the right equipment, mindset and strategies to reach their destination safely and securely. Transition to a new school is no different. Research shows that there are numerous holistic protective factors that can help to ease transition. Conversely, it's also the case that problems with successfully transitioning to secondary school and subsequent lower levels of school connectedness are associated with lower education outcomes, school drop-out, higher levels of depression and anxiety, and increased involvement in criminal, violent and antisocial behaviour. Research also shows that these difficulties may not be equal across different socio-demographic variables, with children from underserved communities (including those from minority ethnic backgrounds and lower socio-economic status) and children with behavioural difficulties facing greater challenges during the transition to secondary school. It's therefore important for all parents and educators to consider how to make this transition as seamless as possible. Along with her co-authors, our Researcher of the Month, Dr Aurelie Lange, has published a new paper which evaluates the efficacy of a new UK-based online intervention called Level Up. In it, Dr Lange seeks to explore families' experiences of facilitators and barriers to engagement and change.
Jul 15, 2024
The impact of digital experiences on teens with mental health vulnerabilities
Over the last decade, digital developments have led to major changes in the ways that teens learn, work, play and interact with others. Digital access is a daily reality for most children and young people. Nine in 10 children in the UK now own a smartphone by the time they reach the age of 11, and the large majority of children aged 11 now use social media (78%) and have a social media profile (72%), despite being younger than the minimum age requirement for many platforms. By the time teens are 17 years old, 97% will use social media. Coincident with this change, adolescent mental health problems have also increased in prevalence. It is therefore no surprise that much research has focused on the relationship between digital experiences and adolescent mental health. However, comparatively few studies have directly compared the experiences of teens with mental health conditions meaning that some key questions remain unanswered. Do adolescents with pre‐existing mental health conditions differ in terms of why and how they engage with the digital world compared to peers without such difficulties? Are specific mental health conditions linked to different patterns of digital usage? What role do such differences play in the development and escalation of these conditions? In a recent paper, our Researcher of the Month, Dr Kasia Kostyrka-Allchorne, and her colleagues, explore what the evidence shows about the digital experiences of teens with mental health vulnerabilities.
Jun 13, 2024
NELI Preschool: a new oral language enrichment programme for preschools and nurseries
Oral language skills provide the foundation for formal education, yet many children enter school with language weaknesses. Oral language is fundamental to children’s overall development and educational success. It is linked to all higher level cognitive skills and is pivotal for literacy development, and education more generally. It’s also vitally important for children’s social and emotional development. The term oral language refers to a complex set of skills that should ideally work seamlessly together to enable children to communicate with others by producing and understanding language. It’s an umbrella term, encompassing numerous component skills which include having a good vocabulary and the grammatical ability to combine words effectively to convey meaning, along with an understanding of cause and effect, memory skills and the ability to plan what to say and what not to say. Language skills develop rapidly between the ages of 3–6 years making preschool an excellent time to intervene to support language development. Because of this, Dr Gill West and her colleagues – as part of a team headed by Professor Charles Hulme – have developed and evaluated the efficacy of a new language enrichment programme, the Nuffield Early Language Intervention—Preschool (NELI Preschool), which is delivered to children the year before they enter formal education. The programme combines language enrichment for all children, with additional targeted support for those with language needs, potentially narrowing the gap in language skills associated with social disadvantage.
May 16, 2024
"More is more”: the impact of careers education on later outcomes
Does school-based careers education, advice, information and guidance (CEAIG) have any influence on later life outcomes? A body of research has shown that careers education and activities can play an important role in helping young people to prepare for and navigate transitions into the world of work. It has also shown that the quality and quantity of provision can vary considerably, with those who are most socially disadvantaged experiencing the least and lowest quality provision. However, until now, the impact of careers education on later life outcomes has remained unclear. A new paper written by Dr Julie Moote and colleagues seeks to find out what relationship there is between young people’s perceptions of the quality and quantity of school-based careers activities and education experienced at the age of 14–16 and their outcomes several years later, when they are 21–22. Findings are discussed in the light of recent legislation relating to careers support in England, which highlights how important it is to ensure that the needs of all young people transitioning into the workforce and adulthood are met.