There are growing calls for bullying prevention and intervention programmes to be made compulsory in all New Zealand schools amid concerns around a bullying epidemic.
New Zealand has one of the highest bullying rates world-wide, with just 35% of 15-year-old students reporting they had never been bullied, according to a 2021 report.
It comes after more than a dozen families came forward to 1News over allegations of bullying at Ashburton College.
"New Zealand has a severe bullying problem. We always feature really negatively in international statistics and that's been the case for a long time," University of Auckland lecturer John Fenaughty said.
Schools are currently being left to trial their own approaches to tackle the problem.
Bay of Islands College, in Northland, is restricting cell phones during in-school hours.
"We've encouraged them that they shouldn't bring their phones to school but if they do, they should hand them in to the front office," principal Edith Painting-Davis explained.
The move has helped reduce fights and given their students a break from cyberbullying.
"You've got to have courage. You've got to have courage to make it stand," she said.
At Wellington's Seatoun School, students are getting anti-bullying lessons as part of the KiVa programme.
It's since led to a 68% reduction in bullying at the school.
"Suddenly the culture changed, where it was OK to talk about it and people believed that something would be done about it," principal John Western said.
The KiVa programme began in Finland in 2006 and is now being used by dozens of New Zealand schools.
"Now the proportion of bullies is less than half of what it used to be, and the proportion of victimised students who are repeatedly bullied has dropped by more than 30%," University of Turku professor Christina Salmivalli said.
KiVa uses a systemic approach, where teachers run regular lessons and intervene when bullying arises. The teachers then monitor both the bully and their victim.
Staff at Seatoun School say it's helped students to understand each other.
"If other schools knew how effective this programme was, it could make a bigger difference to our communities," teacher Sam Broadmore said.
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