ABSTRACT
Prior to the Sheffield Project, there had been a few studies of individual school initiatives which had been evaluated and shown to produce a reduction in incidents of bullying. One of these was a comprehensive school in Kirklees, where one of the research team had been involved with the local educational psychologist in helping the school monitor the effects of various interventions initiated by the senior management of the school. This particular case study had been described in a number of articles (Arora and Thompson, 1987; Arora, 1989; Foster, Arora and Thompson, 1990), and one of the main messages from the school staff was that a whole-school policy was essential if the school’s actions were to be effective. This was because there were a number of ways in which bullying incidents needed to be approached, involving different members of staff and with implications for a number of existing management and pastoral procedures. In practice, the only way they could be co-ordinated was to have an explicit whole-school policy from the onset.
