An education ministry survey shows that students at publicly run elementary, middle and high schools were involved in a record number of violent incidents inside and outside of school in fiscal 2007 — 52,756 cases, up about 8,000 from fiscal 2006. One school reported an average of 5.84 violent incidents inside it and an average of 1.65 outside it.

The figures break down to 28,396 incidents in which students used violence against each other, 15,718 incidents in which articles were broken, and 6,959 incidents in which teachers became targets of violence. The first type of violence increased by 22 percent from the previous year.

Noteworthy is the fact that more younger children were using violence. The report says 5,111 elementary school students used violence, 37 percent more than in fiscal 2006, compared with 38,023 middle school students, 20 percent more, and 13,290 senior high school students, up 5 percent.