Country students are more likely to be bullied than their city counterparts, and Indigenous students report the highest rates of victimisation, a Fairfax Media investigation has found.
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The state's worst local government area for bullying is Latrobe in Gippsland, where more than one in four students report being bullied, while inner-city municipality Yarra had the lowest rate at 9 per cent.
Bullying experts said boredom and isolation drove country teenagers to bully more on social media, while drought and lower socio-economic circumstances meant students took out their frustration on others.
Meanwhile, more than one in four Indigenous students in Victoria reported being bullied last year, compared with one in six non-indigenous pupils.
The analysis is based on the education department's most comprehensive snapshot of student attitudes, an annual survey of year 7-9 students at 96 per cent of the state's government schools.
The data shows that 16,545 of the 91,721 students surveyed in 2015 had recently been bullied.
Some of the areas with the highest reported bullying rates included Ballarat (25 per cent of students), Greater Bendigo (24 per cent) and Mildura (22 per cent).
Note: Areas with low student populations have been excluded from the map
Mildura teen Renee Hunt, 17, said her teachers' indifference to the constant bullying she suffered at the hands of classmates forced her to drop out of school two years ago.
At primary school she said she would often be kicked to the ground by another boy. "My teachers said just to stay away from him but he was coming up to me," she said.
The mistreatment escalated when she started high school, where she was constantly bullied.
"One girl would pick on me but be an angel to the teachers," Renee said. "The teachers just told me to go away because they wouldn't believe it."
"I hated it. I hated the people. I would wag school, come home sit in my room, cry and self harm because I was so frustrated they wouldn't do anything."
Renee said the schools she attended never ran anti-bullying programs. Since dropping out, she has supported a change.org initiative calling for more counselling for bullying victims.
Caitlin Wood of anti-bullying organisation Project Rockit said students in regional areas needed better support and access to anti-bullying programs.
She said Project Rockit had created an online resource aimed at rural and regional areas, which encourages students to intervene when they see a classmate being bullied.
Oscar Yildiz, chief executive of Bully Zero, said his foundation received a disproportionate number of calls from bullied children in regional areas who did not know where to turn.
He has taken his anti-bullying message to remote schools, but said it was costly for a non government-funded organisation to visit remote communities.
Mr Yildiz said cyber-bullying was more widespread in regional areas, and was contributing to the higher bullying rates reported in the survey.
He said country kids could not easily meet up after school or on weekends and turned to social media to communicate, which transplanted any bullying behaviour online.
"A lot of it is because of boredom," he said. "Some kids use social media as their only avenue of entertainment and engagement."
But Grampians youth worker Maurice Billi said the impact of cyber-bullying was overstated, and bullying still primarily took place in schoolyards.
He said students in country areas were not more likely to bully others, but that stress from the drought, isolation and financial pressures of living off the land affected children.
"Sometimes bullying-related behaviour can be a coping measure for kids who may not have skills to cope," he said.
Mr Billi added that in close-knit rural communities with small schools, bullying could be more noticeable and therefore easier to combat.
Victorian Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation chief executive Jill Gallagher said racial discrimination was driving the higher rates of Indigenous students who reported being bullied. "Racism is well and truly alive today," she said.
Australian National University social research fellow Naomi Priest said Indigenous students who were bullied would wag school to avoid their tormentors, while the stress of being picked on led to mental health problems later in life.
The survey data shows more than one in five year 7-9 students in country Victoria last year claimed to have recently been bullied, compared with one in six metropolitan students.
An education department spokesman said the government was working to drive down bullying rates and make schools safe for all students, pointing to the the Bully Stoppers, Respectful Relationships, Safe Schools and eSmart initiatives.
The good news is that bullying rates appear to have have been decreasing over the past six years, with a lower proportion of students reporting being bullied last year than 2009's cohort.
Kids Helpline 1800 55 1800, Lifeline 13 11 14, Bully Zero 1800 028 559
