Victoria launches state-wide bullying prevention framework aligned with national strategy

The Victorian Department of Education released its Bullying Prevention Framework on 29 October 2026, aligning state policy with the National Framework for Protecting Australia's Children and the federal Let's Stop Bullying campaign. The framework requires all government and Catholic schools to implement evidence-based prevention programs by the start of the 2027 school year, with a specific module addressing cyberbullying and image-based abuse. Education Minister Ben Carroll announced $4.5 million in funding for professional development, enabling 15,000 Victorian teachers to complete accredited training in identifying and responding to online harassment and coercion by the end of 2027.

Training teachers to identify cyberbullying after a student reports it addresses one stage of the harm cycle; interception at the point of first contact addresses another. Guardii's anti-cyberbullying detection operates in real time across Instagram, Snapchat, Discord and Roblox, identifying sustained targeting, escalation and coercion in children's direct messages and flagging a child in acute distress to the parent or school professional who can intervene, with a detection module for image-based abuse that routes the incident directly to the right authority. A world-leading AI online-safety platform, Guardii reports the shape and seriousness of a conversation rather than handing anyone a feed of what was said, enabling schools to act on the pattern of harm without imposing a surveillance architecture on every student interaction.