BULLYING

               Prevalence

                    One Norwegian study of 130,000 students found that 15% or one student in seven
                    was involved in some practice of bullying: about 9% as victims while the other 6% as
                    bullies (Ziegler & Rosenstein-Manner, 1991).
                    In Peel, 15% of students aged 5 to 19 years would equate to approximately 27,500
                    children being involved in bullying incidents, 16,500 as victims.
                    A study by Pepler and colleagues of Toronto school children in 1991 found:
                         one in five children claimed that they were victims of bullies more than just
                         once or twice in a school term
                         most self-identified bullies are among 11 and 12 year-olds
                         seventy-five percent of all the bullies are boys
                         four out of ten students identified race as a factor in bullying (Pepler et al.,
                         1994).
                    One researcher estimates that a bullying incident occurs in our school yards once
                    every seven-and-a-half minutes (Zarzour, 1994).

               Health Effects

                    Canadian children have been found to be more aggressive in their relationships with
                    each other (Zarzour, 1994).
                    A national survey reported that 40% of teenagers thought violence in schools had
                    reached a "very serious" stage (Bibby and Posterski, 1992, cited in CPHA, 1994).