Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many incidents of ethnicity-based bullying within schools were reported to her Department in the last 12 months; and what steps her Department is taking to help tackle such incidents.

There is no legal requirement on schools to record and report incidents of bullying and there never has been. Schools should develop their own approaches for monitoring bullying and exercise their own judgement as to what will work best for their pupils.

All schools are legally required to have a behaviour policy with measures to prevent all forms of bullying. They have the freedom to develop their own anti-bullying strategies appropriate to their environment and are held to account by Ofsted.

In July 2017, the department updated its advice for schools, which outlines schools’ responsibilities to support children who are bullied. The advice makes clear that schools should make appropriate provision for a bullied child's social, emotional and mental health needs. This advice is available here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/preventing-and-tackling-bullying.

The department provided over £3 million of funding, between 10 August 2021 and 31 March 2024, to five anti-bullying organisations to support schools to tackle bullying. This included projects targeting bullying of particular groups, such as those who are victims of hate related bullying.