According to a new study of hundreds of children at 17 primary schools in Hertfordshire and north London, young girls are far more prone than boys to get stuck in the role of bullying victim. The researchers, led by Dieter Wolke, said that girls’ ‘tightly-knit’ friendship networks could make it difficult for them to ‘escape the victimisation role’. Overall, children with emotional problems and children in classes with rigid social hierarchies were at greater risk of relational bullying.

Whilst cautioning that their reliance on children’s self-report was a weakness of the study, Wolke’s team said their findings had important implications for teachers and other professionals. ‘These findings call for the development and implementation of intervention programmes that tackle victimisation at an early age in primary school,’ they said.

British Psychological Society