ROYAL Bahamas Police Force officers, led by Supt Stephen Dean visited he Anathol Rodgers School assembly yesterday morning, to speak to students on the topics of bullying and conflict resolution.

Earlier this year, the National Anti-Drug Secretariat, which like the police comes under the Ministry of National Security, released its latest Secondary School Drug Prevalence Survey, which noted that fighting and bullying were still common and not on the decline.

The Secretariat called for the creation or reinforcement of programmes specifically focused on tackling these problems.

The report noted that in 2011, 21.4 per cent of secondary school students were physically attacked one or more times within the 12 months prior to taking the survey.

“Male students (26 per cent) were significantly more likely than female students (17.2 per cent) to have been physically attacked during the past 12 months” the report said.

As for bullying, in the 17 per cent of cases, it most often involved being hit, kicked, pushed, shoved around or locked indoors, whereas male students (23 per cent) were twice as likely as the female students (12.3 per cent) to be bullied in this manner.