This paper discusses the issues of school culture and school organization in relation to children's right to reside in a school environment free of bullying. A comparison is made between a group of schools with low frequency of bullying and a group of schools where bullying frequency was high. The aim is to deepen the knowledge about factors that help to prevent bullying.

Background

In 2011 The National Agency for Education`s published an evaluation (here called the main study) of schools' efforts to prevent, detect and remedy bullying (Skolverket, 2011). The evaluation had a longitudinal design using individual level data selected from 39 compulsory schools. All pupils in year 4-9 in these schools completed a questionnaire on three occasions over a period of two and a half year about their experience of degrading treatment. More than 10 000 pupils answered the questionnaire. In all 840 headmasters, pupil welfare staff, teachers, pupils and parents from the schools were interviewed in order to obtain detailed information about the schools work to combat bullying.  The evaluation showed that a number of actions that the schools used to prevent bullying were effective while other actions may even lead to students becoming more exposed to bullying (for the results see Skolverket, 2011). 

Aim of the research

The aim of the study presented in this paper is to provide an analysis of the empirical material from the Agency's evaluation to deepen the understanding of the differences in the frequency of bullying that existed between the schools in the evaluation.

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