Education Research Suggests Drop in Bullying

Education Research Suggests Drop in Bullying: According to new research, conducted through collaboration between the Government and the University of London, there has been a fall in then number of 13 year olds who have experienced bullying in the last decade – i.e. between 2004 and 2013.

Education Research Suggests Drop in Bullying

Education Research Suggests Drop in Bullying

The findings, published as part of Anti-Bullying Week, compared the responses of 15,700 13 year old pupils in 2004 with those of 13,100 respondents in 2013. The data was drawn from two large scale studies run by the Department of Education and Institute of Education at the University of London.

The findings showed that the number of pupils of this age group being bullied in 2004 stood at 45%. In 2013, the proportion fell to two fifths (40%). Respondents were asked if they had been bullied in the last year.

Whilst the percentage fall may appear small at first glance, if this figure is extrapolated out to the number of pupils nationally, it reveals a drop of 30,000 pupils who suffer from bullying in the last ten years.

In addition, the number of those who said they were being bullied every day fell by two percentage points (10% in 2004 to 8% in 2013) – a reduction of 10,000 pupils in real terms.

Anti-Bullying Week 2014 is focusing on the experiences of disabled and SEN children, as there is a concern that the use of discriminatory language is resulting in a worse experience for these children within UK schools. Interviews with teachers suggest that words such as ‘spaz’, ‘retard’ and ‘mong’ were still being used as part of general conversation.

A potentially worrying finding, released as part of a separate piece of research, has found that almost half (44%) of 1000 adults polled admitted that they regularly used hurtful or discriminatory words such as those listed above, in casual or everyday conversation.

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