Education: Survey: School management perceives more violence

According to school principals, violence is a growing problem in schools in Germany. This emerges from a representative survey commissioned by the Association for Education and Training (VBE), which was presented in Stuttgart. The term violence in the survey included physical and psychological violence or forms of bullying.

Accordingly, 60 percent of those surveyed stated that physical and psychological violence at their school had increased over the past five years. Only four percent of those surveyed perceived a decrease in violence. School principals under the age of 40 and principals of secondary, secondary and comprehensive schools particularly frequently reported an increase in violence.

“Fortunately, the way we deal with violence has changed in the last few decades. What was once trivialized as a trivial offense is now clearly described as violence,” said VBE federal chairman Gerhard Brand. Young school administrators in particular have grown up with this awareness and deal with the issue of violence more sensitively, says Brand.

More than one in three school administrators are aware of cases of physical attacks

In the survey, many school administrators reported cases in which teachers were insulted, threatened, insulted, bullied or harassed. Almost two thirds of all respondents (65 percent) can remember a similar case in the past five years. At more than one in three schools, teachers were threatened over the Internet (36 percent) or physically attacked (35 percent). These are similar values ​​to a survey in 2022. In 2018 the values ​​were significantly lower.

Brand criticized the politicians’ reaction to the increased numbers. “We actually thought that we had woken up politicians with our data. That didn’t happen,” said the VBE chairman.

We have heard promises from politicians that the issue will be taken seriously and will be a matter for the boss. “If politicians really treated it like that, then they have completely failed,” criticized Brand. The ministries of education would first have to reliably record incidents. In addition, affected teachers need to be better supported by their employers.

Students in particular are physically abusive

According to the survey, face-to-face psychological violence was primarily carried out by parents; on the Internet, students were most often the perpetrators. Physical violence came almost exclusively from students.

For the survey, the opinion research institute Forsa surveyed around 1,300 school administrators nationwide between mid-September and mid-October last year. According to Forsa, the results are representative with a margin of error of three percentage points.