Nearly 5,000 Bullying Cases In Schools In 2023
To combat the problem, more school counsellors will be brought into the fold.
By Dale John Wong — 01 Nov 2023, 04:52 PM
Malaysia has seen 4,994 school bullying cases in 2023 so far, according to Deputy Education Minister Lim Hui Ying
During Minister's Question Time session in the parliament today, 1 November, Lim said that the number had been revealed through the ministry's Sistem Sahsiah Diri Murid.
Worryingly, this indicated an increase from last year's number of 3,887 reported cases, which have all been investigated and received follow-up actions such as counselling sessions for perpetrators as well as victims. Lim said that there were only 326 cases in 2021.
Lim added that reversing this worrying trend would require the effort and involvement of all involved parties, including the community, NGOs, and parents
Subsequently, she revealed that the Ministry of Education would act by increasing the number of counsellors in schools with notable trends of bullying.
"If the number of bullying cases increases, we will add more counselling teachers as an immediate measure," she said.
In recent years, Malaysian schools have suffered a rise in school bullying cases, with some of them even making the headlines
For example, a student created a stir in December last year after submitting a letter to Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim detailing the abuse he received at school as a result of racial discrimination from his peers.
More recently, a couple of 11-year-old students were involved in a headline-grabbing incident where they were recorded hitting a fellow student behind their school.
A police report was made by the victim's father after a video of the incident was heavily circulated on social media.
Incidents like these have so far proven to be a big enough problem that UNICEF even addressed it back in a 2018 article, in which it said that 14,000 bullying cases were recorded in Malaysia between 2012 and 2015.
