Understanding the Complexities of Bullying Towards Developing an Evidence-Based Model

In the international as well as in the local setting, bullying happens in secondary schools and it brings potential damage to students’ personal life, academic performance and schools’ enrolment rate, drop-out rate and transferred-out rates. This research has identified potential harm be it immediate or long-term outcomes of bullying to the personal life of the bully victims and to the schools’ setting that promotes safe and motivating environment for effective learning to happen. It includes discussion of the proportion of bullying in the public secondary schools in the Division of Southern Leyte, the type of bullying that is experienced by the bully victim, the possible reasons why the victims are being bullied, and the outcomes of bullying on the students’ personal life in terms of their attendance to classes, tardiness, academic performance and the schools’ effect in term of its enrollment rate, students’ drop-out rate and students’ transferred out rate. Looking into its complexities, this study connects the incidence of bullying to its outcomes. The result revealed that majority of the respondents claimed to have been bullied in schools and the most frequent kind of bullying is peer bullying and social bullying. The reasons why they were bullied, according to the victims of bullying, are economic status, family background and some for their physical defects and intellectual capacity. It was very interesting to note that the results revealed that although most of the respondents were bullied, their attendance to classes and academic performance were not significantly affected. They continue to attend classes as if nothing happened, and they continue to have satisfactory grades for their academic performance. The schools also have common experience in the enrollment rate which continued to increase and having no record of learners-at-risk of dropping, transferred out to other schools due to bullying. Although the potential harms have so significant effect to the personal life of the students and the school administration, it is still recommended that an evidence-based model in the prevention of school bullying must be in place for the utilization of all the secondary schools in the Division of Southern Leyte.