Reducing bullying with the PRIMA anti-bullying programme

Being bullied is associated with a wide range of mental and other health problems, such as anxiety and depression, problems at school, and suicidal thoughts. Your school years are supposed to be fun and educational, but school is the place where you run a particularly high risk of being bullied. In recent years, the advent of social media has led to a rise in cyberbullying. This new form of bullying can often be considered an extension of face-to-face bullying, as it takes place in the same social circles. Group processes play an important role in bullying. Children may become involved in bullying situations as victims, perpetrators, outsiders, or defenders.

It is important for children to be resilient, as this will enable them to help reduce or prevent bullying situations. TNO boasts many years of experience in developing and implementing science-based intervention programmes to increase the resilience of children. When it comes to bullying, we focus on ensuring that preventive and curative anti-bullying programmes are underpinned by science and help develop policies, including through our guideline on bullying for the youth health care sector.

Development of school-wide policies

We are heavily involved in developing anti-bullying policies for schools. In cooperation with Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences and the University of Amsterdam, we spoke to a large number of primary schools to find out what their needs and wishes are in terms of anti-bullying policies. These discussions revealed that schools were keen to have a series of lessons for all primary school year groups (1 to 8), with not too many lessons per year. They also wanted these lessons to focus on reinforcing pro-social behaviour. Finally, schools expressed a wish for a monitoring system to show which pupils were being bullied and which were at risk. Taking these needs and wishes as a basis, we set to work, keeping in mind that the teaching package should use evidence-based methods that have proven to be effective in changing behaviour. The result is the PRIMA anti-bullying programme.

What is the PRIMA anti-bullying programme?

The PRIMA teaching package gives pupils and teachers the tools they need to learn skills that will help them handle bullying situations better and reinforce pro-social behaviour. This makes children less likely to become victims and more likely to act as defenders. Core elements of the PRIMA intervention include a school-wide series of lessons for all year groups, an e-learning and training programme for all school staff, a monitoring tool to keep track of cases of bullying and pupils at risk, and various action protocols for difficult bullying situations.

The PRIMA programme is based on the Olweus bullying prevention programme and is one of the few anti-bullying programmes recommended to schools in the Netherlands. It is recognised in the database of effective youth interventions and was recently identified as one of the effective programmes in the national evaluation of anti-bullying programmes.

“Our PRIMA approach is a recognised and recommended school-wide approach for preventing and reducing bullying in primary schools. We are now trying to take our research a step further and find out what works and for whom. We are doing this by investigating which core elements of anti-bullying policies are the most effective and whether the effects differ for certain groups of children,” says Minne Fekkes, senior scientist at TNO and professor by special appointment of Social Skills and Resilience at the University of Amsterdam.

Next step: improving implementation

PRIMA has proven to be effective in various randomised controlled trials. Results show that more extensive implementation of the programme components leads to a greater reduction in bullying behaviour: up to 30% in the first year. However, many schools do not fully implement all components of the PRIMA programme. For that reason, we are currently studying how barriers to implementation could be removed and how the implementation of anti-bullying programmes in schools could be improved.

Are you interested in being a part of this?

TNO is keen to promote mental health at educational institutions. To this end, we would like to work with schools, umbrella organisations, teachers, teacher training colleges, policy officers, and municipal authorities. If you would like to find out more about what we do in the area of bullying and/or contribute to it, please do not hesitate to contact us.