Survey: Bullying becoming increasingly common in secondary schools

One in ten 8th- and 9th-graders has no close friends

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According to a report entitled Kouluterveys 2008 (”School Health 2008”), released yesterday by the National Research and Development Centre for Welfare and Health (STAKES), school bullying has become more common in the Greater Helsinki area, even though special steps have been taken to weed out such phenomena.
      A total of 31,000 students responded to a questionnaire sent to 8th- and 9th-graders in comprehensive schools and students from the first two years of upper secondary schools and vocational institutes in Helsinki, Espoo, Vantaa, and Kauniainen.
     
”The results of the study are alarming. Particularly scary is the fact that the youths who have no close friends could be the same individuals as those who do not speak to their parents”, notes Rauno Jarnila, the head of the City of Helsinki Education Department.
      ”Based on the results of this study, we could ask whether or not we should do some things in a different way in schools”, says Deputy Mayor Jukka T. Salminen, in charge of the Social Welfare and Health Care in the City of Vantaa.
     
School bullying has not decreased in secondary schools, even though schools have taken steps to prevent such incidents.
      Some 9% of the 8th- and 9th-grade pupils responded that they are bullied at school at least once a week. In comparison, the corresponding figure in the 2006 survey was 7 per cent.
      In upper secondary schools and vocational institutes bullying incidents are clearly more uncommon than at comprehensive schools.
     
School bullying was most common in Espoo, where some 12% of both male and female pupilsin their last two years of comprehensive secondary education reported that they are bullied at least once a week, the study indicates.
      However, Aulis Pitkälä, the Director of Education and Culture in the City of Espoo, does not believe in bullying statistics.
      ”I believe that the growth in such statistics is attributable to a number of recent projects relating to school bullying which have been carried out in Espoo. As a result, an increasing number of pupils have the courage to come forward and say that they have been bullied”, Pitkälä claims.
      Pitkälä reports further that the number of school curators and psychologists was increased after the Jokela school shooting last year.
      Helsinki’s Jarnila also confirms that bullying is under the microscope.
     
”Even though the number of pupils decreases by some 800 annually, the number of school counsellors and psychologists has not been reduced. On the contrary, it has been increased”, Jarnila reports.
      Vantaa is planning a pilot project in cooperation with the hospital district of Helsinki and Uusimaa, in which the health care personnel of schools could consult the children and youth psychiatrists using video negotiations.
      The entire vexed issue of bullying is not going to go away quietly, and the report's release in the same week as the events in Kauhajoki - where the perpetrator Matti Saari allegedly claimed he was persistently bullied at school - could hardly be more timely.
     
The health behaviour of the metropolitan area youths is by all acounts more or less the same as before.
      Some 14% of 8th- and 9th-graders (aged 14-16) smoke daily, while the corresponding figure for upper secondary school pupils is 12% and for vocational school students nearly 40%.
      One in five 8th- and 9th-graders, one in three upper secondary school pupils, and nearly every second vocational school student drink heavily at least once a month.
      One in ten of the comprehensive school pupils, one in five of those in the first two years of upper secondary school, and one in four vocational students have experienced with illegal drugs at least once.
      Almost half of the parents of 8th- and 9th-graders do not know where the child spends weekend evenings.
     
For the first time, the school health study was also conducted in vocational schools.
      Compared with upper secondary schools, which are the stepping stone to university entrance, students at trade and vocational schools play truant more often, use more intoxicants, and are more likely to be overweight. However, they suffer less often from pain in the neck or shoulders or fatigue than do pupils at upper secondary schools.
     
The questionnaire also indicated the hair-raising fact that one in four boys studying at a vocational school believed that a girl cannot become pregnant the first time she has sex.
      Moreover, 12% of girls at vocational institutes reported that they had had non-consensual sex.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Finnish schools drawing up crisis plans to prevent bullying and harassment (3.2.2005)
  Effective programme developed in Finland to reduce bullying in schools (7.8.2008)

See also:
  Schoolyard bullying often leads to cyber bullying (23.11.2007)

Links:
  National Research and Development Centre for Welfare and Health STAKES

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