With the return of girls and boys to face-to-face classes, after the toughest moments of the COVID pandemic, in this 2023 cases of bullying have come to light that have even ended in the death of a minor in Edomex.
The State of Mexico or Edomex —whatever you want to call it— is one of the entities in our country with the highest number of cases of bullying or school violenceaccording to a couple of indicators that we are going to tell you about in this text and taking advantage of the upcoming elections in this state.
(In fact, the school bullying in Edomex has been placed as one of the pending items on the agenda because it is a very serious issue, of which we do not have a good evaluation and diagnosis. Neither at the state nor national level).
School bullying in Edomex
To know the information about school bullying in Edomexwe took two paths: the first has been hand in hand with the work of the Network for the Rights of Children in Mexico (Redim) and the other via the Inegi —with slightly more specific data on gender violence in schools.
What do you think if we go with the Redim, whose data supports up to the title of this note? Because yes, Edomex is one of the states with the most school bullying in Mexico.
In October 2022, the Redim published a compilation of data on school violence in Mexico from the National Survey of Health and Nutrition (ENSANUT) Continuous 2021 and of the Injury Record 2019-2021both from the Ministry of Health.
With ENSAUT, Redim found that throughout Mexico, 30.7 thousand people between the ages of 10 and 17 had suffered physical violence at schoolin the last 12 months.
10.1 thousand girls and adolescents and 20.6 thousand boys and adolescents. This means that 2 out of every thousand girls, boys and adolescents between the ages of 10 and 17 had been victims of physical violence at school during 2021 —the year in which the gradual return to school began due to the COVID pandemic.
And, at the state level? According to the Injury Registries, the states with the most school bullying were Hidalgo, State of Mexico and CDMX.
For example, the data in this registry—from 2020 to 2021—indicated that 61 people between the ages of 1 and 17 were treated in hospitals for physical violence in schools.
42.6% were girls and adolescents and 57.4% boys and adolescents. However, three quarters of this group were adolescents between 12 and 17 years old and one in 5 was between 6 and 11 years old.
And it goes again: Hidalgo registered 17 cases, Edomex 7 and CDMX 6. Here Redim pointed out that the cases had decreased considerably compared to the 519 reported nationwide in 2019 alone.
According to the record, from 2020 to 2021, the number of minors treated in hospitals for physical violence in schools went from 138 to 61.
Girls and adolescents in schools in the State of Mexico
In a much more particular way —and in the context of the crisis of violence against women in Mexico—, the Inegi published the results of the National Survey on the Dynamics of Household Relationships (ENDIREH) 2021.
And here, after having surveyed adolescents from the age of 15, the data showed that school violence prevailed above the records of 2016.
That is, 7 percentage points, going from 25.3% to 32.3%. And with respect to the states, we again find Edomex on the black list.
According to Inegi, Querétaro was the state with the most cases of bullying throughout the school career of adolescents, followed by Edomex and Colima.
La Codehem
Even more specifically —although it already seems like a salad of data with different sources, but it is important to mention them—, from 2022 to 2023, the Edomex Human Rights Commission (Codhem) registered 483 complaints of school bullying.
(Which are classified as a violation of the right to education without violence).
Of these, 390 were in 2022 and 93 so far in 2023, according to the quote from The universal to the director of Codhem, Myrna García.
To do?
As we told you at the beginning of this note, both nationally and locally there is a lack of specific records focused on school bullying in order to deliver a diagnosis of its causes and how to eradicate it.
(We only already saw the disparate numbers between different sources, still focused on a state like Edomex).
Tejiendo Redes Infancia had already pointed it out as a result of the bullying case in Teotihuacán, Edomex: today more than ever a national strategy that guides efforts to prevent and eradicate school bullying —and that goes beyond a single institution, such as the SEP.
