When 0.27 Percent Isn’t That Small

Wow! I knew that bullying was prevalent in the United States, and I had my suspicions that it was not isolated to the United States, but I found an article today which caused my eyebrows to rise. In August 2010, the Red Balloon Learner Centre Group (in the UK) commissioned a national survey to determine how many children are not in school due to bullying. Most of our efforts are given to compiling statistics on kids who are bullied in school. But what about those who are not there?

The results were an astonishing ~ 0.27 percent of kids aged 11 – 15 are not in school due to severe bullying. While such a small percentage doesn’t seem like much, let’s take a look at some numbers. The Red Balloon Learner Centre Group estimates approximately 16,000 children out of 6 million of school children aged 11 – 15 are either long-term absent or being home schooled because of severe bullying. This is not the number of children overall who have been bullied, but those who have left school because the bullying was too severe!!

How do those numbers equate for the United States? Well, I was unable to find a similar study conducted in the United States, but taking the UK statistics and applying them to the greater population numbers in the United States, the ~ 0.27 percent equates to 955,000 plus students who are staying out of school due to bullying. 0.27 percent doesn’t seem so small anymore, does it?

When close to one million students have left school because of oppressive and unrelenting bullying, it is time to take action. The question? What do we do about the situation? How do we combat it?