New anti-bullying policy for schools to be announced

New anti-bullying guidelines will be published by the Education Minister today.

The new guidelines are aimed at creating a uniform approach across primary and secondary schools - with a firm emphasis on tackling online bullying.

Each school must develop its own anti-bullying policy with the help of parents, teachers, and pupils. Education Minister Ruairi Quinn will unveil the new procedures this afternoon.

Ian Power of youth website SpunOut.ie said schools must be penalised if they fail to get tough on bullying.

"There really needs to be consequences, and that's where the inconsistency has been between the schools - somebody has been ignoring the problem in their schools, ignoring that there's any issue to do with bullying," he said.

"So I think it's really good that we're going to see procedures that all schools will have to adopt in order to implement the action plan."

He said the real test of the guidelines will be how they're implemented.

The new guidelines follow months of review and the Action Plan on Bullying which was published earlier this year.