No laughing matter: Do schools have anti-bullying tools
In Ulyanovsk, a schoolgirl survived after falling from the 10th floor of a house, but is now in intensive care. Meanwhile, investigators have opened a criminal case — a 14-year-old girl was the victim of harassment by classmates. Her mother knew about this, but it was not possible to prevent the tragedy — at some point the schoolgirl shut down and stopped talking about the problems, rejecting the idea of leaving her class. At school, the mothers said that the abusers had "calmed down." Izvestia investigated why they still can't handle bullying in schools.
What happened in Ulyanovsk
The fact that the girl who fell out of the window of the 10th floor may have been a victim of bullying was reported by local media. Journalists cite harassment from classmates as a potential reason for the desperate act: they bullied the girl and created a social media channel on which they posted photos with insults. Other students stopped communicating with her because of this. She did not receive timely support in a difficult situation.
The girl's mother said that she was raising her daughter alone. She described the girl as "calm, quiet and diligent." She practiced oriental dancing. The harassment against her was organized by three classmates. Mom went to school in the fall to investigate this issue, but then she was assured that "the girls had calmed down."
In order not to miss the repetition of history, the mother said, she asked her daughter every day if she was okay — and at some point the girl stopped complaining, and refused the offer to transfer to another school.
Law enforcement agencies have already paid attention to these reports. The head of the Investigative Committee of Russia, Alexander Bastrykin, instructed the head of the Ulyanovsk Investigative Committee to report on the progress of the investigation. A criminal case has been opened on the fact of attempted suicide by threats and systematic humiliation of human dignity against a minor using the Internet (Part 2 of Article 110 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation).
The Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia in the Ulyanovsk region stated that they had not received any information from the girl's parents and school representatives about illegal actions against the girl. Law enforcement officers are now reconstructing the full picture of events.
How bullying ends
Reports of bullying came in the last days of January from several regions at once. In Surgut, at the end of last week, the Investigative Committee began checking for crimes under Articles 213 of the Criminal Code ("Hooliganism") and 293 of the Criminal Code ("Negligence") due to information about bullying at a city school: a video of teenagers beating a schoolgirl spread online.
Bashkortostan is conducting an investigation into the illegal actions of teenagers in Kumertau: a resident of the republic contacted the Investigative Committee, according to whom her 14-year-old son has been bullied for a long time by a group of classmates and other school students. Here, too, it came to physical harm: in January, teenagers unreasonably beat a minor on the street, and the boy was hospitalized.
So far, there are almost no cases where bullying has led to real punishments under criminal articles. Maria Afonina, President of the Zhuravlik charity organization, chief expert psychologist of the NET Bullying program, explained that such cases are rare and the practice is still being formed. So far, the media has only seen cases where bullying has caused fines. So, in Magnitogorsk, school No. 59 was fined 100,000 rubles, and in Orenburg, the director of Lyceum No. 1 was fined 20,000 rubles. Nizhnearemzyanskaya secondary school in the Tyumen region paid 50,000 rubles for bullying a schoolboy, and the families of two children responsible for bullying were also punished: each of them was fined 30,000 rubles.
In Secondary school No. 3 in the city of Nytva, Perm Krai, both the school itself and the parents of a boy who called names to one of the schoolgirls were also punished.
— The trial is usually long and requires a lot of resources: material, temporary, emotional, — said Maria Afonina. — While the trial is underway, the child continues to suffer from bullying. If the school does not respond to bullying quickly and does not begin proper work to stop bullying, it is more effective to direct resources not to the courts, but to ensure the safety of the child — for example, to change schools, switch to online learning and restore his psychological well-being.
The NET Bullying project does not know whether the situation with bullying of children in schools, where such incidents later became public, has been studied. Pavel Azyrkin, an expert at the A.A. Pinsky Center for General and Additional Education at the Higher School of Economics, noted that after high—profile episodes of bullying, or so—called bullying, suicide against bullying, there may indeed be a short-term decrease in tension and frequency of such cases. But the general situation remains almost unchanged.
Azyrkin added that the problem of responding to bullying situations lies in its predominantly reactive rather than proactive and systemic nature.
"The intervention usually begins after the incident: guardianship authorities, the prosecutor's office, the police, and the Investigative Committee come to the school, and the focus shifts to finding the perpetrators and analyzing the specific case," the Izvestia interlocutor noted.
Has the problem of bullying been sufficiently investigated
Anna Makarchuk, director of the Jewish Museum's Tolerance Center and an expert of the anti-bullying federal project "Everyone is Important," noted that the situation with research on bullying is "ambiguous."
— Large-scale sociological studies mainly concern the prevalence of bullying and its various manifestations, as well as the emotional perception of bullying by respondents. But with in—depth research on the effects of bullying on the class as a team, the situation is very bad - there is no high-quality and full-fledged research. All that psychologists have at their disposal are descriptions of individual cases, which rarely become the property of the professional community," the Izvestia interlocutor noted.
According to her, the effects of bullying on the child's psyche in foreign psychology have been well studied. She calls research on the causes of bullying quite rare, but important: for example, unsafe atmosphere and competitive relationships in the classroom, as well as the authoritarian position of the teacher, are among the risk factors. It has also been proven that bullying occurs more often in the classrooms of teachers who are in a state of emotional burnout, says Anna Makarchuk.
Pavel Azyrkin, on the other hand, believes that the causes of bullying have been well studied. Among them, he also mentions the hierarchy of the environment, the lack of self-regulation and conflict resolution skills, and individual and social factors in children themselves.
— There are also known protective factors — supportive relationships with peers and adults, a sense of belonging to a group, and developed social and emotional skills. The consequences of bullying can be both short—term (anxiety, decreased learning motivation, emotional distress) and long—term, including increased risks of depression, social isolation, and unfavorable life trajectories in adulthood, he said.
According to him, dozens of international and national anti-bullying programs have also been developed worldwide, which have demonstrated moderate but sustained effectiveness. What they have in common is an emphasis not on punishment, but on prevention.
However, Anna Makarchuk calls isolated qualitative studies of the effectiveness of anti-bullying programs.
— This is a serious problem: without an evidence-based scientific base and an assessment of effectiveness, truly working algorithms and practices cannot be developed, as a result of which psychologists and educators are forced to move by touch. Such actions not only do not guarantee a solution to the problem, but they can harm children, the expert is sure.
Anna Ermolaeva, Deputy Head of the Federal Coordination Center for Psychological Services in the Education System of the Moscow State Pedagogical University, stressed that Russia is now moving forward in this direction: Russian research on the causes and consequences of bullying is moving away from talking about "it seems to have gotten better" to real data. Moreover, such research is included in the plan for the implementation of the Concept of the development of the system of psychological and pedagogical assistance in the Russian Federation for 2024-2030.
The study by the Moscow State Pedagogical University's Federal Coordination Center, she says, describes, among other things, a practical "bridge" between science and school: the development of a screening assessment tool to identify bullying and subsequent preventive work based on the results of such screening.
"This is fundamentally important: without regular research, the school and the system as a whole are more likely to react after, whereas the task is to see the risks earlier (school climate, relationship dynamics, vulnerable groups) and prevent the development of bullying," she stressed.
Do teachers know how to deal with bullying situations?
The experts interviewed by Izvestia do not have a clear opinion on the effectiveness of the anti-bullying measures developed in Russia today.
Anna Makarchuk recalls that at the beginning of 2025, the Ministry of Education of the Russian Federation issued a memo for teachers, parents and schoolchildren, which lists disciplinary, administrative and criminal liability measures for various actions that are part of the "perimeter" of bullying. She believes that this memo alone will not be able to help teachers learn how to properly respond to bullying and prevent it. According to the expert, special training of teachers is needed, as well as developed preventive programs that will be in their arsenal. So far, teachers are unarmed in a bullying situation.
— Our study among 1.5 thousand teachers within the framework of the All—Russian anti-bullying program of the Center "Everyone is important" showed that it is the lack of specialized knowledge and available prevention methods that prevent teachers from effectively preventing bullying more than other factors, - she said.
Anna Ermolaeva from MGPPU, however, emphasizes that algorithms for teachers already exist and are being sent to the regions.
— For example, in the algorithm for responding to harassment, the adviser to the director of education is first asked to distinguish harassment from conflict, and then immediately organize a fact check with the class teacher, a social educator and a psychologist, to collect information about the duration and frequency, the roles of participants, the condition of the child, etc., - she said, He added that the school here is responsible, among other things, for monitoring the result and subsequent support.
However, Anna Ermolaeva emphasizes, even the best school instructions do not work alone if a child needs long-term or specialized help. Therefore, all the methodological recommendations of the Moscow State Pedagogical University explicitly state: if the situation has gone beyond the capabilities of a school specialist, the administration initiates interaction with external services.
— This is an area where there is often a lack of a common roadmap not only for schools, but also for partners: juvenile affairs commissions, social protection, healthcare, guardianship authorities, and the police. The clearer the roles and deadlines are — who gets involved, when, and with what authority — the less likely it is that a child will be left alone with bullying, and adults will act in isolation," she said.
Pavel Azyrkin notes that, nevertheless, there is still no national anti-bullying program in Russia. The available solutions are still local and are not replicated everywhere. Another problem is the lack of attention given to children.
— Although it is peers who are most often the first to see bullying, whereas for adults it can remain unnoticeable. A trained and informed witness of bullying is able to radically change the dynamics of what is happening and prevent a specific case even before it takes severe forms," he said.
NGOs offer their projects. So, the NET Bullying project has a free anti-bullying program, which is already used by more than 7 thousand teachers from different regions.
However, the truth is, says Dmitry Kazakov, chairman of the Teacher trade union, that school teachers simply do not have the opportunity to use the instructions offered by various institutions.
— Teachers simply do not have time to even communicate with children because of the bureaucratic burden, the need to work at two or three rates for a normal salary, etc., - said the interlocutor of Izvestia. — Until the working conditions change for the better, the situation will remain the same, when it is almost impossible to even notice the bullying situation.
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