York St John

Social Innovation Projects:

Bullying Behaviours: In Schools, On Buses

Nathalie Noret is a Senior Lecturer in Psychology. Her research areas are focused on experiences of bullying and the relationship between bulling and mental health. She currently runs two projects. One explores bullying behaviour on school buses, and one is a longitudinal study looking at the relationship between bullying and mental health over the course of the autumn and winter terms of school.

Bullying on School Buses Project

The Bullying on School Buses project is in collaboration with Paul Vodden, a national campaigner for improved safety on school buses.

‘The project came about when Paul contacted the anti-bullying alliance who, in turn, put him in touch with me. This is the third survey in a series of projects looking at bullying on school buses.’

York St John University has provided a student as researchers position for the Bullying on School Buses project. The main aims of which are:

1. To identify the prevalence of bullying on school buses.

2. To identify intervention programmes currently used on school buses.

3. To examine how many bus providers use CCTV as an anti-bullying strategy and examine the effectiveness of CCTV.

Nathalie hopes that the report will be launched in preparation for this year’s anti-bullying week (November 2017). This would be ideal to raise the profile of the issue of bullying on school buses. Hopefully, this will start a programme of activity on raising awareness of the issue, developing appropriate interventions, and fundamentally improving the safety of pupils on school buses.

Nathalie has been in discussions with the Anti-Bullying Alliance and Kidscape, ‘we plan to extend the work on bullying on buses to develop a broader piece of work examining bullying on the journey to and from school.’

Longitudinal Case Study

Nathalie has previously conducted large scale school surveys examining the prevalence of bullying in schools. This particular study is part of Nathalie’s PhD, and aims to examine how the prevalence of bullying changes over the course of half a school year, and the impact of these changes on mental health.

‘From the school’s perspective, I am working with the school to develop evidence-based interventions to manage the impact of bullying on mental health’

York St John is providing research funding to back this study, which hopes to test how bullying predicts mental health over time. In addition, Nathalie hopes to use the findings of the surveys to inform schools’ anti-bullying activities. The results aim to reduce bullying and improve mental health outcomes for victims.

Whilst some delays have taken place with recruiting schools, Nathalie has addressed this by extending the data collection period used. Once this study is complete, Nathalie aims to create intervention programmes to address the relationship between bullying and mental health.

To find out more about Nathalie’s research contact: