Comparing Friendly Schools Plus and Cool Kids (bullying) for the reduction of peer victimisation among school children aged 8-11.

Aims: The PAVe project aimed to evaluate methods to prevent bullying victimisation and promote students’ social-emotional skills in Australian primary schools. Methods: The PAVe project consisted of four conditions. Each school was randomly allocated to one of these conditions. Within each school, “high-risk” students were identified if they scored high on measures of victimisation and anxiety. One of the conditions in the project was a ‘whole-school’ program (Friendly Schools) while another condition utilised a program exclusively designed for “high-risk” students only (Cool Kids – Taking Control). A third condition included a combination of these two interventions. The fourth condition allowed schools to simply use their usual strategies and was used as a control/comparison group. Outcomes: Across the two years of the trial, overall levels of victimisation decreased. This decrease occurred broadly across all of the four conditions. In other words, children’s victimisation decreased similarly, whether or not schools offered specific bullying programs or simply their usual SEL curriculum. Overall, implementation of the programs was less than optimal. Within Friendly Schools, implementation of the whole-of-school component was poor, while implementation of the in-class curriculum component was strong. Within Cool Kids- Taking Control, implementation of the program by parents at home was poor. However, in a few cases, school counsellors implemented the program directly with children in school and this completion was excellent.