Bullying is not an isolated phenomenon in Romanian schools. Three out of ten children are repeatedly excluded from the group of colleagues, a similar number are threatened that colleagues might beat them, and one in four children are humiliated in front of colleagues, shows a recent study of Save the Children Romania.

Two out of ten children admitted that they repeatedly excluded colleagues from the group, and three out of ten didn’t let some children play with some other students in the class, reports local Mediafax.

The study also revealed that 23% of children were threatened with exclusion from the group, 31% were excluded, and 39% were in the situation in which some other kids were told not to play or talk to them.

Some 37% of the children who participated in the study said that humiliating rumors about them were spread in the school, 84% witnessed a situation in which one kid threatened another kid, 80% saw when a child was humiliating another child, and 78% witnessed a situation in which a kid was being pushed by colleagues.

More than 70% of kids witnessed a bullying situation at school, and 58% saw such a situation in their own homes.

The study focused on how children and parents perceived bullying, their attitude and behavior in different social contexts such as the school and the group of friends, and how often bullying appeared in these situations. It targeted several behaviors associated with bullying, such as exclusion from the group, humiliation, physical violence, or destruction of someone else’s things.

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Irina Popescu, irina.popescu@romania-insider.com