Bullying in schools in Portugal increased by 37% in 2021/22, with the police registering 2,847 criminal incidents of injury and threats throughout the school year. This Portuguese police data reveals the highest value in the last nine school years.
Of these 2,847 incidents, 1,169 were physical violence, and 752 were threats.
In comparison to 2020/2021, during the Covid-19 pandemic, there were 783 more cases reported to PSP, including 418 more physical incidents and 208 more threat incidents in 2021/2022.
Since October 10, PSP has been hosting the operation “Bullying is for the weak,” directed at students from the ages of 6 to 18 years old. The operation ends this Friday.
PSP said that the last school year, the police had heavily invested in education surrounding bullying, with 6,250 education events to teach children about bullying and cyberbullying, reaching over 100,000 students.
These actions will “contribute along with other conditions to contradict this turnaround in the decreasing (bullying) tendency that was consistent since the school year 2013/2014,” said PSP.
The police data found that most victims were boys between the ages of 12 and 15 years old.
