Cinealtas explained for schools
Cinealtas sets out a whole-education approach to preventing and addressing bullying. This page translates that policy context into practical planning questions for schools.
What Cinealtas is
Cinealtas is Ireland's action plan on bullying. It frames prevention and response as a whole-education responsibility, connecting school culture, curriculum, policy and support.
For schools, the important point is that anti-bullying work should not live in one annual awareness week or one written policy. It needs to show up in relationships, everyday language, reporting routes and how adults follow up concerns.
School-level implications
For school leaders, the practical question is how policy becomes behaviour: what pupils learn, how staff respond, how parents are kept informed and how patterns are reviewed.
Useful implementation work might include reviewing pupil voice, checking whether staff use the same definitions, mapping who records concerns and making parent communication easier to understand after an incident.
Using Anti-Bullying Week
Anti-Bullying Week can act as a visible implementation point for the wider Cinealtas principles when schools use it to reinforce language, reporting routes and pupil voice.
The week is strongest when schools use assemblies and lessons to open a conversation, then return to the same messages through SPHE, pastoral care, tutor time and staff briefings across the year.
Schools turning Cinealtas into classroom practice can ask about a workshop shaped to their phase and context.