Prof Judy Hutchings shares the findings of a newly published paper looking at the implementation of the KiVa antibullying programme across Welsh schools.
Bullying in schools is widespread, and its consequences can last through childhood and into adulthood. There is evidence that frequent bullying in childhood is linked to increased risk of self-harm and a higher risk of depression in adulthood.
Although bullying is preventable, and schools across England and Wales have policies in place to tackle it, it is evident that they need support to adopt an approach which encompasses the whole school system to implement strategies which not only address bullying when it occurs, but look to prevent it happening altogether.
A newly published article looks at the Wales-led KiVa school based antibullying programme and explores its impact on pupils. It uses data from the recently published paper based on a trial with 118 schools and over 11,000 pupils. Half of the schools delivered KiVa and half continued with current practice. After one year of KiVa implementation, the results showed a 13% reduction in bullying victimisation and peer problems, as well as significant benefits to children’s empathy.
What is KiVa?
KiVa was a government-funded project developed in Finland. Similar to England and Wales, although every school in Finland has to have an anti-bullying policy, when this was monitored over a ten-year period, there were no reductions in the rates of bullying. Consequently, the Finnish Government commissioned academics from Turku University to develop and evaluate a programme to address this.
After one year of KiVa implementation, the results showed a 13% reduction in bullying victimisation and peer problems, as well as significant benefits to children’s empathy.
Following the positive results of the initial trial, the government funded a complete roll out across the country with 90% of Finnish schools signing up. The trial identified seven different types of bullying and showed reductions in all of them, including cyber bullying.
The programme developed by Professor Salmivalli was based on evidence that the levels of bullying experienced by children in school is influenced by the behaviour of pupils who were neither bullies nor victims. Professor Salmivalli developed what has come to be known as the social architecture of bullying model. This demonstrates that, in addition to bullies and victims, the behaviour of other pupils impacts the levels of bullying. These roles include:
- helpers of the bully – pupils who join in but do not initiate bullying;
- reinforcers of the bullies – pupils who do not join in but provide an audience for the bully;
- pupils who behave as if it is not happening – perceived by victims as silent approvers; and
- pupils who defend victims.
The extent to which pupils play these different roles is associated with levels of reported victimisation and bullying.
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KiVa as an approach to schooling
KiVa is a whole school approach in which all pupils in the school are taught the definition of bullying and how to recognise and stand against it. Pupils receive fortnightly lessons throughout the year covering how to make the school a happy and friendly place and how to recognise various types of bullying and their roles in the process. The scripted lessons include a range of activities, games, discussions, role-play activities and video-taped material. There are also materials for parents, as well as visual reminders within the school, including KiVa posters and staff tabards, to remind pupils that they are in a KiVa school and that the school does not stand for bullying.
KiVa is a whole school approach in which all pupils in the school are taught the definition of bullying and how to recognise and stand against it.
The programme also includes a structured process for dealing with bullying when it occurs. Any member of staff who thinks that a bullying incident has occurred passes this information to a trained KiVa team who decide whether it is a bullying incident, a misunderstanding, disagreement, or an accident. If it is identified as bullying, a structured process takes place that involves the bully committing to behaving differently towards the victim. This does not necessarily involve them having to admit to bullying, but merely to recognise that this is a KiVa school, that bullying is not acceptable and that there is a pupil who needs support.
In Finland, the process was monitored for seven years and showed year-on-year reductions in levels of bullying: 75% complete cessation of bullying and a 20% reduction in its occurrence.
KiVa in Wales
In 2012, academics from Bangor University realised that anti-bullying policies in Welsh schools varied considerably, were not necessarily carried out in practice, and schools were not provided with evidence-based tools to address bullying.
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As a result, the Welsh Government funded training in KiVa as part of a school improvement grant and 14 state-funded Welsh primary schools took up the training and rolled out the programme. The results after one year showed significant reductions in bullying, leading to the Bangor-based Children’s Early Intervention Trust charity being granted a license to disseminate KiVa further. A total of 412 schools were trained achieving more positive results.
An application to the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) enabled funding of a large scale randomised controlled trial led by Bangor University and taking place across North Wales and three sites in England. Eleven thousand children were recruited from 118 schools and randomly allocated to either receive KiVa or continue with usual practice. Although many measures within this enormous database are still being explored, our latest paper published in February 2025 explores the ways in which KiVa impacted the behavior of all of the pupils. Although it is unclear how many pupils actually accessed the programme immediately after the Covid-19 pandemic, the results show significant reductions in reported bullying, helping bullying and providing an audience for bullying, meaning that KiVa is a valuable programme to support schools to reduce bullying and its harmful consequences.
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