A Staggering Number Of Young Teens Face Bullies And Violence In School

Fully half the world’s students aged 13 to 15, or 150 million teens, reported that they’d been bullied in the past month or been in a physical fight in the past year, according to a new report from UNICEF. In addition, half of all children live in countries that allow some forms of corporal punishment in school, putting 720 million kids at risk of violence from their teachers.

Those are findings of a UNICEF report released this week, “An Everyday Lesson: #ENDviolence in Schools,” which compiled its own survey data and combined it with information on school violence collected in various countries. For too many children, the report says, schools are danger zones where they can be punched, slapped, bullied, sexually assaulted, physically punished, humiliated or ridiculed by fellow students and teachers as well.

“Violence against children is universal, in all countries, in all settings,” says Claudia Cappa, senior adviser on statistics, UNICEF, who analyzed the data for the report. “At the same time, it manifests in ways that can be really different.”