Frequency of Bullying

1. Local Research

Bullying occurs in all schools but is more common in Primary Schools.
The Leicestershire Pupil Attitude Survey (PAS) asks the question:

Have you ever been bullied in school this year?

The responses from 1999 to 2003 have been remarkably consistent, with evident reductions in reported bullying from 2002 - 2006.

	Never (%)	Once or Twice (%)	Often (%)
2005/2006	48.4	34.2	13.9
2002/2003	45.6	37.3	16.3
2001/2002	45.9	39.0	14.6
2000/2001	47.7	36.5	15.1
1999/2000	47.2	39.1	13.3

---

In an EPS Survey (2003) 2,600 Primary pupils were asked:

Have you been bullied in the spring term?

The responses were:

Frequency of Bullying	Percentage (%)
Once	30
More than once (2 or 3 times)	2.5
Often	7.5
Never	50

Overall 62% of the pupils said they had been bullied whilst at Primary School.

---

The Leicestershire Student Attitude Survey in 2002/3 asked 9,760 Secondary students whether they had been bullied in school this year.

The results were:

Frequency	Percentage (%)
A few times	29.6
Often	6.8
Never	62.2

In the EPS Survey (2003) of 795 students the figures were higher:

Frequency	Percentage (%)
Once	22.0
More than once	13.6
Often	7.4
Never	57.0

---

2. National Research

A DfES study in 1997 revealed that more than 12% of Primary and Secondary pupils were bullied at least 2 or 3 times a month.

Kidscape research revealed that 7 out of 10 young people aged five to sixteen had been bullied at least once, four out of ten more than once and 1% were bullied so badly that they suffered severe problems.

Over 20,000 calls were made to ChildLine about bullying last year and it was the most sited issue by callers (Twigg 2002).

In research by Katz et al (2001) a third of the girls and a quarter of the boys had at some time been afraid of going to school because of bullying.

3. Summary

What is highlighted by research is that bullying can be significantly different between comparable schools due to the consistent application of anti-bullying policies by all members of the school community with an emphasis on preventative measures within a positive and inclusive school ethos.

Although all schools by law have to have an anti-bullying policy many are perceived by students to not be addressing the real issues. In a recent study three quarters of the young people questioned felt that their school did not have an effective anti-bullying policy (Katz 2001)

The Leicestershire County Council is not responsible for the content of external internet sites