NSW Anti-Bullying Framework

From 2027, every school in New South Wales will be required to have policies and procedures aligned with the NSW Anti-Bullying Framework and to publish their anti-bullying policy on their website, with the NSW Education Standards Authority providing information to schools in 2026 regarding how to review and align existing policies. The Framework, developed under the leadership of Emeritus Professor Donna Cross OAM, identifies four components that underpin effective anti-bullying policies in schools: Preventing, Responding, Partnering and Implementing. NESA will conduct spot checks to ensure compliance with the evidence-based policy requirement as a condition of school registration starting Term 1 2027.

Mandatory policy publication and registration-linked compliance create accountability for institutional process but do not in themselves equip schools to detect cyberbullying occurring in private messaging channels outside school supervision. Schools required to demonstrate evidence-based prevention and response capabilities can deploy AI-driven monitoring as part of a duty-of-care framework, using Guardii's anti-cyberbullying detection to identify harmful peer interactions in real time across the platforms NSW students use most frequently. The system detects sustained targeting, exclusion tactics and escalation patterns in conversations on Instagram, Snapchat, Discord and Roblox, alerting a designated school contact when a student is experiencing harm, which enables the timely response the Framework mandates and provides documented evidence of the school's proactive intervention for NESA compliance review.