Step 3: Plan action

Developing an action plan

Using the data gathered, plan your school's priorities for bullying prevention action plan. Review each of the nine elements of the Bullying-Free NZ School Framework to identify and establish appropriate goals that fit with your school's vision. Look at what you have in place, and what you could add or enhance. 

There are a range of tools that can be used to develop an action plan — the team should choose or develop one that suits the culture and values of the school.

The action plan needs to fit with your school’s vision, and focus on enhancing positive outcomes and building staff and students’ skills and strategies. Goals should be clear and easy to understand, and address the needs revealed by the data gathered and by the collective judgement of the team.

Look for leveraging goals that can have a positive impact on several other areas of need.  For example, promoting greater trust between school staff and students will lead to more reporting, and more reporting will lead to responding more frequently. Researching solutions for the issues that your school identifies is also an important part of this phase.

Consulting on the action plan

When the draft Action Plan has been completed and approved, it should be sent out to staff, parents and whānau, students and the wider school community for consultation and feedback.

A communication plan can be developed to support this consultation and feedback process. Ideally areas with potential for immediate positive change will be highlighted, and the data presented in a way that does more than deliver unfavourable news, providing areas to build on and connecting bullying prevention to the school’s charter and values.

Finalising and approving the plan

Once consultation with the school community has been completed, refine the action plan in line with any feedback. Presented to school leaders and Board of Trustees for final approval.

Once the action plan is approved, the bullying prevention team can move into implementation.  This should include regular monitoring and reporting on progress to school leaders, the Board of Trustees and the school community against the agreed milestones and outcomes specified in the action plan.

The plan should be reviewed annually with a major review every 3 to 5 years to ensure long-term effectiveness of implementation activity.