I went to two Midwest high schools in the late 70's early 80's, one was large (5,000 students) and the other was tiny (17 in my class). Both schools had bullies, but the smaller private school had bullies with behavior far in excess of the large public school. The larger school had bullies that would fight each other and protect some nerds they liked or knew, while the smaller school was not diverse enough, so the few bullies had nothing to stop them, and they went way, way too far.