Name-calling rises in schools as physical bullying declines

TEENAGE girls are twice as likely to report cyber-bullying than boys, a major government study has found.

Incidents of physical or violent bullying among GCSE students has fallen over the past 10 years but cyber-bullying is an emerging trend, with one in 10 reporting it, research shows.

The Department for Education interviewed 10,000 15 and 16-year-old pupils in 2015 about trends in bullying, and compared their answers to a cohort of pupils in 2006.

Between 2006 and 2015, there has been an overall fall in reports of bullying, with the largest drop in violent bullying. The study also shows that girls are twice as likely to report namecalling and social exclusion, while boys are more likely to report physical threats and actual violence.

Researchers described the findings as “broadly positioned”, with the rate of bullying among pupils falling from 37 per cent in 2006 to 30 per cent in 2015. However, it added that beneath the reduction is a “more varied picture”.

“While violent forms of bullying have declined significantly, name-calling and social exclusion have increased since 2006,” the report said.

“Females reported higher rates of bullying overall in 2015 than in 2006, with the increase entirely caused by name-calling and social exclusion, while the rate of bullying for males fell over the period.

“These diverging trends led to females reporting significantly higher rates of bullying overall in 2015 than males, despite reporting similar rates in 2006.”

Bullying also varied significantly by ethnicity, researchers said, with teenagers from African and Asian backgrounds generally less likely to report bullying than white British pupils.

Meanwhile, young people from the most deprived neighbourhoods were slightly less likely to report being bullied than their peers from more affluent areas.

“It is unclear whether this suggests that bullying is equally an issue for affluent areas as it is for deprived areas, or whether perceptions of bullying and reporting thresholds may differ by area,” researchers said.