What is PRfE?

PRfE is an online reporting tool that allows schools within a local authority to log prejudice-related incidents.

Local authorities have complete oversight of all incidents recorded across all schools and can analyse the data at local authority, district, and individual school level.

Schools can use the reporting functionality to analyse their own incidents. All reporting is available in real-time.

Every incident logged in PRfE captures details on the nature of the incident, the type of prejudice, details of both the victim and the perpetrator and what follow-up actions were taken.

All incidents logged in the system are anonymised and do not include data that can be used to identify individual pupils.

Why is it important to record prejudice-related incidents?

Identify trends that enable targeted responses

Identifying trends will enable local authorities and schools to carry out preventative rather than reactive work and produce more relevant and better targeted programmes of education.

Measure the success of strategies

Monitoring incidents will provide a good indicator of how successful strategies aimed at reducing prejudice have been.

Provide a safe environment for staff and pupils

Recording prejudice-related incidents demonstrates a pro-active and positive ethos, where everyone is valued, and prejudice and discrimination are not accepted.

How does PRfE benefit Local Authorities?

The PRfE system offers unprecedented insight into what is happening across the local authority, its districts and at individual school level. This rich dataset allows authorities to spot trends and identify specific issues of concern, in turn enabling evidence-based decision making and ensuring focus and resource are targeted on the right areas.

Local authorities will be able to benchmark themselves against regional and national averages and these comparisons can be tracked over time to gauge the effectiveness of programmes aimed at addressing prejudice in schools. Local authority data will not be shared with, or identifiable to, other authorities.

PRfE holds data that is commonly asked for in Freedom Of Information requests and considerable time and effort can be saved because reports can be generated in seconds.

Teacher with a laptop

  • 'Adults who have been bullied in childhood have been consistently found to be at increased risk of anxiety and depression, as well as have lower educational attainment. Children who display bullying behaviours are at increased risk of depression and suicidal thoughts, as well as becoming involved in offending behaviour and dropping out of school. Young people who are both bullied and bully others are at the greatest risk of experiencing negative outcomes in later life.'

    NHS Scotland, 2019

  • 'Schools should be mandated to collect and monitor school bullying incidents and to specifically record incidents of prejudice-based bullying. This should also be reported to local authorities, so that these can target resources to areas with high rates of bullying.'

    Lady Falkner, Chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, 2020

How does PRfE benefit schools?

Teacher reading to young pupils

It is very difficult to tell whether an incident is a 'one off' or a repeat if incidents are not being recorded and analysed. PRfE contains reporting that will allow schools to identify themes and to measure the impact of interventions aimed at reducing prejudicial behaviour. Schools will only have visibility of their own incidents, but the local authority will have oversight of all incidents across all schools.

Every school can decide which staff members have access to the system, and because it is cloud based it can be accessed from any internet-connected device, including mobile phones. The system is intuitive, and incidents can be logged quickly and easily. Staff can sign into the system using their Microsoft Office or Google log-in credentials so no need to remember additional passwords.

  • ‘There is a correlation between lower GCSE results and reported experience of bullying, with bullied young people on average achieving two grades less in one GCSE qualification than their nonbullied peers. In addition, there is a significant gender disparity, with 35% of female students reporting being bullied, whereas the figure for males was lower, at 26%.’

    Bullying in the UK – House of Commons briefing paper, based on DfE analysis of the second Longitudinal Study of Young People, 2018

  • 'The rewards for schools of capturing and reviewing data on prejudice-based bullying are significant. Teachers have told us that while recording data may at first appear to be an administrative burden, it has saved them time because they have not had to deal with much bigger issues once they escalate. Some schools have told EHRC that the data shines a light on other issues, including the reasons behind poorer grades and class absences.'

    Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), 2017

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