(ECNS) -- Nearly half the victims of bullying in junior middle schools choose to stay silent rather than seek help or solutions to the problem, China Youth Daily reported on Friday.
A study on junior middle school bullying conducted by the China Women's University showed that 48.9 percent of the students never sought help after being bullied, while 52.6 percent attributed their silence to the fear of "losing face among schoolmates," according to Modern Education News.
The China Youth and Children Research Center conducted a survey of 5,864 primary and middle school students in 10 provinces and municipalities, and discovered that 32.5 percent of students suffered occasional bullying, while 6.1 percent were frequently bullied by senior schoolmates, Legal Daily reported.
Data from the public opinion tracking center of the Legal Daily's website indicated that 75 percent of the 40 cases of school violence exposed by media reports from January to May of 2015 occurred between middle school students. Junior middle school students were especially prone to such violence, accounting for 42.5 percent, followed by senior middle school students at 32.5 percent. University, vocational school and primary school students took up 15 percent, 7.5 percent and 2.5 percent, respectively.
Cases of violence between boys and between girls totaled 85 percent of all school bullying, the report said. Violence between girls accounted for as much as 32.5 percent of the total. Unlike direct confrontations usually seen between boys, the violence between girls more often took the form of insults or compulsion, which resulted in emotional harm to the victims, it was added.
A study released by the Beijing High People's Court showed that 68 percent of offenders attacked their schoolmates in a cruel manner and nearly 60 percent of school violence cases were triggered by trivial matters, Legal Daily said.
The Legal Daily's website found that trivial matters were the major cause of school violence, accounting for 55 percent, followed by money-related rows, 17.5 percent, and emotional entanglements, 17.5 percent.
Earlier, Tang Jun of Renmin University of China told reporters that the social risks of school bullying have been underestimated, resulting in inadequate attention to such incidents as well as loose supervision in schools.
