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 crossnational 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.