Anti-Bullying Rapid Review: What Australian Schools Need to Know

The Australian Government announced the Anti-Bullying Rapid Review on 16 February 2025. The aim was to examine what Australian schools were already doing well, where existing anti-bullying policies were falling short, and what a consistent national approach to bullying should look like.

Consultation began in February 2025 and concluded at the end of August 2025. The review included 115 stakeholder meetings across Australia and received more than 1,700 written submissions from students, parents, teachers, school leaders, unions and other education representatives.

Bullying is hardly a new problem for Australian schools. What is changing is the expectation that schools respond quickly, consistently and with a clear understanding of how bullying can move between the playground, classroom, group chat and Microsoft Teams without pausing for the bell.

What did the Anti-Bullying Rapid Review find?

The review was co-chaired by clinical psychologist Dr Charlotte Keating and Professor Jo Robinson AM, who leads Orygen's Suicide Prevention Research Unit and helped develop the #chatsafe guidelines for safe online communication about self-harm and suicide.

Their final report was released in October 2025, with Education Ministers agreeing to all eight recommendations.

One of the biggest outcomes was the creation of the National framework for Bullying in Australian schools. The aim is to establish shared expectations across the government, Catholic, and independent education sectors, while still giving schools sufficient autonomy and flexibility to respond to their local contexts.

A consistent national standard does not mean every school needs an identical policy downloaded from a government website. It means students and families should be able to expect the same basic level of protection and response, regardless of which Australian school their child attends.

Under the plan, agreed to by Education Ministers in February 2026, Australian schools are expected to embed the national framework into their anti-bullying policies and procedures by Term 1, 2027.

For educators in NSW, you can also read our practical guide to the NSW Anti-Bullying Framework for a closer look at the state-level requirements.

What does the National Anti-Bullying Framework ask schools to do?

The National Framework for Addressing Bullying in Australian Schools sets out six principles that schools should implement together. It is not a checklist for dealing with individual incidents. It is a broader model for building a school culture in which bullying is less likely to occur, and staff know what to do when it does.

Set clear and consistent expectations

Schools should have dedicated anti-bullying policies and processes that make it clear bullying and other harmful behaviours will not be accepted. These expectations should be embedded across school operations and adapted to the school’s local context.

Involve the whole school community

Anti-bullying policies should not be developed by leadership in isolation. The framework calls for students, parents, carers, teaching and non-teaching staff to help shape the school’s approach, with school leaders responsible for upholding and embedding behavioural expectations throughout the school culture.

Make reporting and response processes clear

Policies should be visible, accessible and specific. Students and families should be able to find out how to report bullying, what the school will do next, what support is available and how concerns can be taken further when they are not resolved. Schools should also record the steps taken and communicate their actions as far as privacy requirements allow.

Intervene early and respond appropriately

The framework emphasises prevention and early intervention to address harmful behaviour before it escalates. 

Responses should be trauma-informed, i.e. they should protect the student from further harm, avoid blame and take into account how the incident may have affected their sense of safety and trust. They should also be relationship-focused, tailored to the circumstances, and designed to support everyone affected. 

Students displaying harmful behaviour should also be helped to understand its cause and impact, rather than the school relying on punishment alone.

Give staff the training, time and support to act

Teachers, school leaders and non-teaching staff need to understand the school’s anti-bullying procedures and have access to practical guidance. The framework also recognises that staff need time for professional development and support when they are managing difficult or distressing incidents.

Address the wider conditions that allow bullying to develop

Schools are expected to consider the risk and protective factors that influence bullying, including school culture, discrimination, and the needs of different student groups. This includes age-appropriate teaching on respectful relationships, social and emotional skills, digital safety, citizenship and bullying itself. Schools should then use data, evaluation and research to check whether their approach is actually working and adapt it as new issues emerge.

Schools now need to respond to bullying within two school days

The recommendation attracting the most attention is that schools should make reasonable efforts to begin responding to reported or observed bullying within two school days.

While this may sound daunting at first, it doesn't mean that every bullying incident should be investigated and neatly resolved within 48 hours- that would be a near-impossible task, and school wellbeing and pastoral care teams are not magicians.

What it does mean is that a response should begin within 2 days.

Depending on the situation, that might involve:

• Checking on the immediate safety and wellbeing of the student

• Contacting parents or carers

• Preserving messages, screenshots or other evidence

• Speaking with relevant students and teachers

• Putting immediate safety measures in place, such as increased supervision, temporary separation, a safe place at break times or a nominated staff contact.

• Referring serious violence, threats or harassment to police or other relevant authorities where required.

For schools, this makes clear reporting processes essential. Staff need to know where concerns go, who is responsible for the initial response and how follow-up actions will be recorded.

What actually works to reduce bullying?

The evidence collected during the review points strongly towards a whole-school approach.

Research cited by the NSW Department of Education found that well-implemented school-based anti-bullying programs can reduce bullying behaviour by around 20-23 per cent and reduce victimisation by approximately 17-20 per cent.

Like most student wellbeing initiatives, the most effective programs do more than run an annual anti-bullying lesson or stick an 'addressing bullying in our school' poster in the library. Effective anti-bullying programs work best when they are embedded into the school culture, combining:

• Clear, inclusive anti-bullying policies

• Consistent staff responses

• Teacher training

• Improved playground and high-risk area supervision

• Social and emotional learning

• Simple reporting pathways

• Support for students experiencing or displaying harmful behaviour

• Meaningful involvement from students and families

A whole-school approach also means looking beyond the immediate incident. Schools need to examine the conditions that may be allowing bullying to continue, including inconsistent staff responses, poor supervision, social exclusion, discrimination and peer dynamics.

These factors can shape who is targeted, how harmful behaviour spreads and whether students feel safe enough to report it.

Online and offline bullying are rarely separate

The national framework treats bullying as part of a broader continuum of physical and psychosocial harmful behaviour. It also calls on schools to provide developmentally appropriate digital safety and citizenship education as part of their prevention strategy.

For schools, this means that cyberbullying should not be treated separately from IRL bullying in either policy or response. Why? Because the two don't exist separately in real life. An argument may begin on the playground, continue in a group chat overnight, and end with a nasty student-created meme or deepfake going viral by the morning.

Our Cyberbullying in 2025 guide for educators explores how these behaviours are changing and what schools can do to improve prevention, reporting and response.

Anti-bullying policies need to address behaviour that happens both on and off campus. Policies and reporting procedures need to explain how schools will respond when online behaviour affects a student's safety, wellbeing, attendance, or participation at school, even when the original post or message was sent after hours.

When preparing for the framework's implementation in 2027, schools should take the opportunity to check whether:

• Cyberbullying is clearly included in the school’s definition of bullying

• Students know how to report harmful behaviour that occurs in group chats, social media or school-managed platforms

• Staff understand when an online incident becomes a school wellbeing or safety concern

• Parents know what evidence to retain and who to contact at the school

• Records can connect repeated online and offline incidents involving the same students

• Anti-bullying policies cover emerging forms of harmful behaviour, rather than relying on examples written several years ago.

Similarly, schools should review their digital citizenship and online safety curriculum to make sure it is not still living in 2005. Are students learning about the risks they are actually dealing with now, including group-chat harassment, image-based abuse, impersonation, anonymous accounts and exclusion that follows them from the classroom to their phone?

Solid policies around online conduct are a start. They need to be backed by practical education, clear reporting pathways and enough visibility for schools to spot when harmful behaviour is becoming a pattern.

Visibility matters, but it is not the whole answer

Strong policy, repeatable procedures and trusted relationships between students and staff remain the foundation of any anti-bullying response. Technology cannot tell schools the full story, understand intent or replace a conversation with a young person.

It can, however, help schools identify concerns that may otherwise remain hidden.

Fastvue Reporter for Education, and now our Fastvue Monitor for Microsoft 365 integration, brings keyword-matched emails and Microsoft Teams messages into Fastvue Reporter, along with relevant internet activity. This helps authorised staff identify patterns of harmful behaviour, gather context and begin responding sooner.

Not to monitor every playground spat in microscopic detail. Just to give the right people better visibility when something genuinely needs attention.