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Experts are increasingly worried about school violence, the recent incident being in Patras where, a few days ago, a 14-year-old student was beaten by her classmates, probably outside the school.

Similar cases involving students have been observed not only at schools but also in neighbourhoods, which hinders their investigation, especially when such incidents are not reported because of fear or due to other consequences.

The results of recent large-scale research that contains students’ answers to questions about school violence in a special poll will be officially announced on 6 March.

According to the unofficial results, however, 10% of students are victims of different types of school violence, as explained for "Ethnos" newspaper by Paris Vendiris, chairman of the coordination committee of the organization for preventing and responding to school violence.

It is estimated that the number of students using violence exceeds 5% of the total number of students.

It is also noted that boys are more frequently involved in incidents of physical violence than girls who more often resort to verbal violence. Boys are involved in cases of violence more frequently than girls, the relevant ratio being 3 to 1. The cases of school violence are more common in primary and secondary school classes and their number decreases in the final year of high school. Half of the student victims of school violence do not tell anyone about the incidents, while the rest usually share this with friends, and rarely with teachers and parents.

Preventive actions

"School violence and bullying have many serious consequences for both physical and mental health as well as for the psychosocial development of the child", explains Paris Vendiris.

"In some cases, the consequences are particularly dangerous and may have a tragic end. The concept of violence refers to any kind of verbal, psychological, physical, and even online or Internet, violence. The terms used to describe the phenomenon are as follows: "school violence", "bullying" and "victimization". They define a case of unprovoked, deliberate, systematic and repeated violence and aggressive behaviour in order to oppress, inflict and cause physical or mental pain in, children by their peers, at school or outside it.

The separation of children into victims and abusers does not solve the problem since both groups are entangled in the nets of the same sick phenomenon and need appropriate psychological support. If you fail to help the victim, he or she develops a traumatic psychological behaviour that leads to isolation, depression, even to extremes. However, if you cannot stop the oppressor, you will incite him or her to continue his or her criminal behaviour, with all the possible consequences that this might have in the future."