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According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) as part of their PISA evaluation (Program for International Student Assessment) 2015, in their report “Students’ Well Being”, which was released at the end of April and includes a chapter on bullying, Costa Rica is the second country in Latin America with more bullying cases among the countries that are part of the OECD.
“PISA is an ongoing program that offers insights for education policy and practice, and that helps monitor trends in students’ acquisition of knowledge and skills across countries and in different demographic subgroups within each country. PISA results reveal what is possible in education by showing what students in the highest-performing and most rapidly improving education systems can do,” explains the OECD report, and continues, “approximately 540 thousand students completed the assessment in 2015, representing about 29 million 15-year-olds’ in the schools of the 72 participating countries and economies. Students also answered a background questionnaire, which sought information about the students themselves, their homes, and their school and learning experiences”.
Bullying is a problem that currently affects an 8.9% of teenage students; this percentage is higher in countries like the United States (10%) and Mexico (10.1%). When it comes to Latin America the two countries that show the worse results are Dominican Republic with 12.2% and Costa Rica 10.9%, concludes the OECD report.
Perú, Colombia and Chile have the lowest numbers of students affected by bullying in Latin America, with a 6.1%, 7.6% and 7.9% respectively.
Students reported conducts such as being made fun of or laughed at, being threatened, being excluded, suffering physical abuse, had their personal belongings destroyed or stolen, and having had rumors being spread about them.
Qatar is the country that showed the higher index of bullying in the world with 19.1%, followed by New Zealand which shows 18.3 and United Arab Emirates with 17.8%.
Countries with the lowest bullying index in the world are South Korea 2.1%, Netherlands 3.3%, Japan and Iceland with 5.1%.
Bullying leads to many other problems in teenagers including low school performance, low self-esteem, aggressiveness and depression.
