To ask the Minister of Education what measures or metrics are being used by his Department to establish the level of compliance with the Addressing Bullying in Schools (Northern Ireland) Act 2016.

Under the Addressing Bullying in Schools Act (Northern Ireland) 2016 (the Act), a school’s Board of Governors is responsible for the implementation and schools are required to record data on incidents or alleged incidents of bullying type behaviour, their motivation and their outcome. The Act does not include the requirement for schools to share this data with the Department. Given this context, the Department is not currently in a position to establish the level of compliance with the Act in schools in Northern Ireland.