Weight-related Bullying in Schools: A Review of School Anti-bullying Policies, 2024

Weight is the most common reason for being bullied at school - far more common than other targets for bullying such as ethnicity, religion or sexual orientation. Most schools have anti-bullying policies with best practice suggesting policies should explicitly identify forms of unacceptable behaviour.

We conducted an audit of secondary schools in southwest England to determine if/how they mention weight-related bullying in their policies. We obtained lists of all secondary mainstream state, private, and specialist schools in seven local authorities and downloaded anti-bullying policies from their websites. Policies were searched for key words related to weight and size. We also recorded whether policies mentioned appearance or other key targets for bullying, such as race, religion, sexuality etc. We obtained school level data including size, gender mix, academic performance and quality ratings.