Improving relationships and behaviour in schools: ensuring safe and consistent environments for all. Joint action plan 2024 - 2027: 2nd Annual Progress Report

Theme 3: Support for children and young people

Action 9: Age and stage appropriate resources are available to support children’s social and emotional development.

In November, respectme led on the Anti-Bullying Week 2025 campaign in Scotland and produced five new anti-bullying films supported by an extensive suite of learning resources for Primary and Secondary age groups, to explore bullying and its ripple effects. The resources show how a sense of personal power can support positive self-esteem and belief in young people and their ability to make things happen and bring about change when it comes to bullying. The films have been viewed by over 19,000 school children, in every local authority area.

With support from an Education Scotland Associate, a review of the Compassionate and Connected classroom materials has taken place and changes to the materials have commenced.

Education Scotland has facilitated a Relational Approaches network that has met four times in 2025. Twenty-six Local Authorities have engaged with the network. Participants value the opportunity to stay up-to-date with relevant policy, guidance and to share practice. They have identified key areas they wish to explore further such as building the sustainability of relational approaches.

Action 10: Children and young people are supported to develop healthy relationships and behaviours, grounded in tolerance and respect.

To promote positive relationships and behaviour, children and young people need support to develop healthy, respectful relationships.

The curriculum has a clear focus on the importance of positive relationships and behaviour and identifies children and young people being responsible citizens as one of four capacities. This foregrounds the importance of children and young people having respect for others, understanding different beliefs and cultures and a commitment to participating responsibly in political, economic, social and cultural life. As well as being a core element of the Life and Ethos of the School as a Community context for learning, it is featured across curriculum areas and expectations such health and wellbeing, social studies, religious and moral education, modern languages and learning for sustainability.

A range of curriculum resources underpin this, a recent example is the development of www.antiracisted.scot by the ScotDEC Global Learning Centre, developed as part of the Anti-Racism in Education Programme. This website includes resources designed for the early years through to senior phase aimed at understanding racism and other discrimination and prejudice and creating resources to promote inclusion, rights and social justice.

The Scottish Centre for Conflict Resolution (SCCR), funded by Scottish Government, have developed free digital resources and professional learning to support practitioners to help children and young people understand difficult emotions, regulate mood, and improve their relationships with others. The resources focus on learning as a means of early intervention. The resources include activities for classes, groups, or for one-to-one discussion. Education Scotland developed a webpage to link practitioners to the SCCR resources and promoted the resources through a national webinar in November, Relational and restorative practice in action: Insight from Scottish education. The webinar also provided exemplars of Peer Mediation approaches and Mentors in Violence Prevention programmes in schools. The webinar was attended by 128 practitioners.

To support the call to action from its Youth Action campaign, respectme developed a new e-learning module on the ‘'Power of Peers,' which takes a lead adult, alongside children and young people, through the process of setting up a local, peer-led, Anti-Bullying Club to encourage young anti-bullying activists to create change in their setting.

Professional learning and support has been offered to enable more secondary schools to deliver Mentors in Violence Prevention (MVP), a programme to reduce gender-based violence. To date during phase 2, 421 staff from 19 Local Authorities have been trained in MVP. Following a further MVP Train the Trainer event 22 Local Authorities now have their own training team. The percentage of participants that agreed or strongly agreed with the statement ‘I have the necessary skills to educate others about sexual harassment, dating violence & sexual assault in my work’ increased from 38% before training to 98.5% after training. Two major events were held, one for professionals and one for young people with Jackson Katz, author of MVP, as the keynote speaker. Train the Trainer professional learning on preventing gender-based violence was delivered to Early Years and Childcare and primary staff. Staff representatives from 14 Local Authorities have now taken part in this professional learning.

The Mental Health in Schools Working Group was re-established in December 2024. An initial focus of the group has been to review and refresh the existing professional learning resources, originally developed in 2021 to ensure they remain relevant and aligned with the current context and evidence. The updated resources are expected to be published in 2026. The group has also been considering support for schools in relation to self-harm and suicide prevention.

Updated statutory guidance on Relationships, Sexual Health and Parenthood was published in February 2026. This updated guidance further supports teaching of consent, appropriate relationships and boundaries to help young people make informed choices that promote and protect their own and others’ health and wellbeing. The revised guidance is designed to help teachers provide learners with the skills and knowledge to develop safe and healthy relationships.

In February 2026, Scottish Government launched a campaign to tackle online misogyny, targeted at boys aged 11-18. The campaign formed part of the broader Equally Safe strategy, and supports work to address gender-based violence in schools by addressing the underlying attitudes and systems that perpetuate it. Though primarily aimed at young people and their parents, the campaign was shared with schools to raise awareness.

Action 11: Children and young people’s views are embedded in the development of school policies and procedures.

Guidance produced as part of the relationships and behaviour in schools action plan continues to highlight the importance of schools proactively engaging with their whole learning community, including children and young people, in the development of their local policies. This messaging was included within the Fostering a positive, inclusive and safe schools environment guidance, and guidance on risk assessments for violent, aggressive and dangerous behaviour.

To support schools and local authorities to take a genuine approach to youth voice and consultation activities, in June 2025 Education Scotland published its Youth Voice Toolkit. The toolkit develops an approach to youth voice based on the principles of peer research, inclusion, democracy and equality. The toolkit contains implementation guidance, the Empowering Youth Voice Resource Pack and support materials for practitioners and leaders. Education Scotland’s National Complex Needs Network has also been running professional learning sessions to explore approaches that can be used to ensure that all learners voices are heard such as Invisible Voices.

The refresh of the national attendance guidance Included, Engaged and Involved Part 1, was informed by the views of children and young people, disengaged from education. The contribution of these views was facilitated by Quarriers, who were a member of the Attendance working group that informed the development of the guidance.

The development of the whole school approach to racism and racist incidents was informed by feedback and views from members of the Anti-Racism in Education Programme Stakeholder Network Group and the Racism and Racist Incidents subgroup. Members of these groups represented expertise in education and antiracism, and several contributed from the perspective of their grassroots experience of working with children and young people who experience racism. In 2024, Intercultural Youth Scotland (IYS) Youth Ambassadors provided feedback and recommendations for the four workstreams of the Anti-Racism in Education Programme, following which each of the subgroups formally responded. In 2025, IYS as a member of the Racism and Racist Incidents subgroup, facilitated two young people’s focus groups to provide direct feedback on a draft of the Whole School Approach, which was incorporated into the guidance.

In addition, in April 2025, the Children’s Parliament published a set of calls to action on anti-racism from children. These calls to action were developed as part of work commissioned by the Scottish Government to adapt the Breaking the Mould anti-racist curriculum principles for a primary school setting. The anti-racist curriculum principles promote the importance of areas such as:

• the difference between individual and systemic racism, their impacts, and how they intersect or connect with other types of injustice
• learning about positionality, privilege and power, and unlearning bias, prejudice and divisiveness
• that everyone has a right to be safeguarded from racism and discrimination, and should be empowered to challenge any infringement of this right
• that racism and discrimination should be understanding as a source of serious harm for learners, colleagues, families, carers and wider community members

The Calls to Action on anti-racism from children included:

• help us identify racism and how it hurts people
• help us understand power and privilege so we can make things fair for everyone
• teach us how to stand up to racism and help others

These calls to action were submitted to Education Scotland as part of the Curriculum Improvement Cycle.

Members of the Mental Health Schools Working Group met with members of the Children's Parliament to discuss their Call to Action around mental health and anti-bullying in schools.