Queensland to trial mandatory anti-bullying training for all state school staff under updated framework

Queensland Education Minister Di Farmer announced on 1 October 2026 that all state school staff will be required to complete mandatory anti-bullying and cyberbullying training by mid-2027, as part of the state's response to the federal Anti-Bullying Rapid Review. The training modules, developed in partnership with the Alannah & Madeline Foundation and the Office of the eSafety Commissioner, will cover recognition of online grooming, sextortion and image-based abuse as well as traditional bullying. The trial will begin in 150 schools in Term 4, 2026, and will be evaluated before the statewide rollout. Queensland data showed a 37 per cent rise in cyberbullying incidents reported to the Department in 2025, with the majority involving Instagram, Snapchat and Discord.

Training equips staff to recognise warning signs, but the window for intervention often closes before an adult becomes aware of the conversation. Real-time detection intercepts harm at the point of contact. Guardii's cyberbullying module operates across Instagram, Snapchat, Discord, Roblox and other platforms, identifying patterns of sustained targeting, coercion and escalation as they develop in direct messages and flagging serious incidents to parents or school safeguarding teams immediately. The system enables a teacher or welfare officer trained under the Queensland protocol to act on timely intelligence rather than waiting for a student to disclose or for physical evidence of distress to emerge, addressing the temporal gap between the onset of harm and its discovery.