Tryouts on Antibullying Certification Method kick off

Tryouts took place in 8 high schools in 5 European countries with the goal to test a method and certify the quality of a school’s antibullying policy. The Antibullying Certification method is an initiative of the European Antibullying Network (EAN) and is being developed by partners from across Europe thanks to Erasmus+ funding of the European Union.

The method
The certification method focuses on exploring the current school policies and reviewing how they can be improved. The certification is a participative process. Surveys are filled in by students and teachers in the framework of dedicated workshops. More specifically, students and teachers do their own interactive review and provide recommendations to the management, whereas the management team makes a final analysis and a guiding committee decides on the specific methods to improve an antibullying strategy.

Tryouts
The partners of the project worked over the past year on draft products and updated them based on feedback from 30 students and 20 teachers from 8 participating schools. In the first week of March, students and teachers had their final say on the draft products during a meeting held in Liverpool. Participants discussed how students, teachers and principals can work together in order to develop a school policy with the full commitment of the entire school population.

In April and May schools will test this method and it will be evaluated by users and national committees of experts and authorities in June.

Presentation
The method will be published in November 2019 and will be presented during a conference that will be held by the European Antibullying Network on 28 and 29 November in Brussels. The method will be free for use for any school and EAN will offer professional consultancy and an independent audit.

The Antibullying Certification partnership consists of Organizations from 5 countries: Greece (The Smile of the Child), Italy (Fondazione Hallgarten Franchetti - Villa Montesca and CESIE), The Netherlands (GALE - The Global Alliance for LGBT Education), Spain (Asociación Cívica de Comunicación y Educación “Sophia” - ACCESO) and the UK (Merseyside Expanding Horizons). GALE is the lead partner of the project.

If you are interested to apply for a position in one of the national or the European Feedback Committees, please contact one of the partners or info@gale.info.

Watch here a short film on the ABC try outs held in Liverpool with the participation of students from schools across Europe.

More information about the project can be found on: https://www.gale.info/en/projects/abc-project

For more information about the press release, you can contact the EAN secretariat at press@antibullying.eu or at +30 210 3306 140.

EAN was established in 2014 as a result of the respective EU-funded (Daphne III) project and was officially registered in Brussels in March 2015, while today is composed of 23 civil society organizations from 14 European countries (Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Greece, Italy, Ireland, Lithuania, Malta, The Netherlands, Northern Macedonia, Romania, Spain, Sweden, UK). Since June 2018 EAN has also a full member from the United States. The Presidency of the European Antibullying Network is currently held by the Greek NGO “The Smile of the Child”.