Looking into topics related to violence among teenagers, there has been a meeting of the advisory council Education for All. Its members studied the report from the Ministry of Education and Science on battling emotional and physical violence in schools, as well as other tasks performed by the ministry in this area, as reported by UNESCO LNK consultant Kitija Balcare.
UNESCO report Behind the numbers, which analyses the causes of violence and bullying in the education sector, indicates that every third schoolchild (32%) has experience bullying from his or her peers at least once in the past month.
In Europe and North America the most common form of bullying is psychological bullying. Cyber bullying affects nearly every tenth child.
36% of schoolchildren have been involved in physical fights with other schoolchildren and 32.4% have suffered physical attacks at least once last year.
Similar trends are detailed in the report prepared by Latvia’s Ministry of Education and State Education Quality Service, which mentions that Latvia has very high violence levels among schoolchildren. According to OECD PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) international study data for 2018, Latvian fifteen-year-olds suffered bullying from their school peers – the index in Latvia’s case shows that
35.5% of Latvia’s schoolchildren (22.6% on average in OECD countries) experience various forms of bullying “Several times a month”, “Once a week” or more often.
“A person can only grow and develop fully in a safe environment. Unfortunately, the data for schools in Latvia is harsh. This violent environment hurts what’s important the most – the quality of the education process, which dictates every child’s future opportunities.
This is why the meeting focused on topics like safety, prevention of emotional and physical violence in education institutions. There is also the topic of cooperation between the state and municipalities,” stresses UNESCO Latvian National Commission’s Vice-President, Minister of Education and Science Anda Čakša.
According to surveys organised by Edurio LTD together with State Education Quality Service in 2021/2022 performed in 16 municipalities in Latvia, 24% of schoolchildren suffer physical violence the most often from teenagers. In 11% of cases violence comes from adults – teachers or other school employees. Schoolchildren mentioned hitting, shoving, theft and hiding of personal items, as well as damaging or burning of clothes and other personal items as the most often kinds of bullying.
According to survey results – emotional violence in the education environment is much more common than physical violence.
Emotional violence is experienced by 37% of schoolchildren and 31% of teachers.
“Violence and bullying at school can have very negative effects on the affected children. Consequences from violence can affect children’s ability to concentrate during lessons. It can also make them want to skip activities or lessons entirely, as well as negatively affect their average results and future academic options.
An atmosphere of anxiety, fear and insecurity is incompatible with learning, thus reducing the quality of education for all children,” Stephanie Giannini, UNESCO’s Deputy Director-General for Education, mentioned in the report.
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