It’s a hard-knock life for us: a multilevel analysis on the association between grade retention and being bullied in 25 countries

ABSTRACT

Across the world, numerous students are being bullied at school. Bullying is often caused by a power imbalance between students. Therefore, identifying potential sources of such a power imbalance can prevent school bullying from happening. Based on the labelling theory, we expect that grade retention can lead to such a power imbalance and, therefore, increase the likelihood of being bullied at school. Hence, this study examines the association between grade retention and self-reported victimisation. We also expect that retainees will be less likely to become a victim of school bullying in schools and countries with a high number of other retainees. If true, this would signal a moderating effect of both school- and country retention composition on the association between grade retention and victimisation. The contextualised impact of grade retention upon victimisation is assessed by cross-national multilevel analyses on PISA2018 data (25 countries; 8,039 schools; 159,412 students). Overall, our findings indicate that being retained in primary and/or secondary education is associated with higher levels of victimisation, while retainees suffer from more victimisation in countries with a low number of other retainees. In contrast to our expectations, however, we did not find such a moderation effect of school retention composition.

KEYWORDS:

• Grade retention
• victimisation
• school bullying
• cross-national research
• multilevel analysis
• educational systems

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

Data available on request due to privacy/ethical restrictions: the data that support the findings of this study are publicly available on the website of the OECD. Our modifications to the data are available on request from the corresponding author. https://www.oecd.org/pisa/data/2018database/

Ethical guidelines

This study was carried out with utmost respect for the 1964 Helsinki Declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. Informed consent was explicitly obtained from all participants involved in the study, while participants could retract from the study at any given moment. The PISA dataset was anonymised by providing each case with an anonymous identification number, in order to assure the privacy of the respondents. Data are stored in a safe way and are only accessible upon request. They are only to be used for the purpose of scientific research. Ethics approval was not required for this study.

Additional information

Funding

Our research is funded by the Research Foundation Flanders (FWO, Dutch: Fonds voor WetenschappelijkOnderzoek – Vlaanderen).

Notes on contributors

Timo Van Canegem

Timo Van Canegem is aligned with the research team CuDOS, where he recently graduated as a doctoral candidate. In his doctoral dissertation, he studied the contextualized, non-cognitive effects of grade retention from a cross-national perspective.

Mieke Van Houtte

Mieke Van Houtte is senior full professor and head of the research team CuDOS. Her research interests cover diverse topics within the sociology of education, among which gender. She is a member of the Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Science and the Arts.

Jannick Demanet

Jannick Demanet is associate professor and member of the research team CuDOS. He researches school- and system-level effects on non-cognitive outcomes and educational careers, particularly grade retention and higher education. He is vice-coordinator of RN10 (Sociology of Education) of the European Sociological Association (ESA).