SENATOR Sherwin Gatchalian urged the Department of Education to improve its mechanisms for the reporting of bullying cases in schools.

Gatchalian noted the discrepancies in the agency’s data and the findings of large-scale international assessments, which he said means a large number of cases went unreported.

In a Senate panel hearing that reviewed the implementation of the Anti-Bullying Act of 2013 or Republic Act 10627, DepEd reported that bullying cases have been on the rise since School Year 2014-2015 where 5,624 cases were reported.

The highest number of bullying cases was in SY 2018-2019 with 21,521. The number dropped to 11,637 for SY 2019-2020 possibly due to the shift to distance learning.

The senator cited the results of the 2018 Programme for International Student Assessment saying that the Philippines got the highest percentage of 15-year-old learners, out of 79 countries, who reported that they experienced bullying at least a few times a month.

Based on the study’s results, 65 percent of learners said they were bullied.

Meanwhile, the 2019 Southeast Asia Primary Learning Metrics also revealed that 62.5 percent of the country’s Grade 5 learners said they experienced bullying.

Compared to other Southeast Asian countries, the Philippines’ Grade 5 learners are the most exposed to bullying.

“If you look at PISA and SEA-PLM figures, we’re talking about more than 60%, 11,000 is not even one percent of the total student population, so merong discrepancy. If you look at DepEd’s numbers, ang layo. What the large-scale examinations are saying is that it’s up to 65%, so if we convert that to the student population we’re talking about up to 17.5 million students as opposed to 11,000, so how do we reconcile that?” Gatchalian said.

“The first order of business is to improve mechanisms for reporting because there are many students who are not reporting, who are scared of reporting,” he added.