Younger Pupils in Class Particularly Often Victims of Bullying and Violence

Especially the younger pupils in class are often victims of violence and bullying. For boys or children with migration background the risk of being bullied by their classmates is particularly high. These are the findings of a current analysis of individual data of ten-year-old pupils, conducted by the Centre of European Economic Research (ZEW) in Mannheim.

The study analysed how children’s social development and success in school depends on the fact that they are among the younger or older pupils in their class. The study takes the age difference, which results from a fixed date for the school entry age, into account. The study does not assess the effect on children whose age differs from the regular age, for example, because they repeated a class. The study analyses data of ten-year-olds pupils from 17 countries. Most of them attended 4th grade at the time of the study. The data comes from the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS), which also includes the children’s responses to a special questionnaire regarding violence and bullying in school, as well as from a database of international rules of school enrolment.

The results show that younger children in a class are considerably more often victims of physical and psychological violence in school than their older classmates. Particularly boys and children with migration background are the victims. Moreover, the study indicates that children who suffer from bullying or violence because of their age tend to get worse results in the PIRLS study. The impact of the age is especially high in Anglo-Saxon countries, particularly in Scotland, England and some provinces of Ontario and Québec in Canada.

For further information please contact

Dr. Andrea Mühlenweg, E-mail:  muehlenweg@zew.de