system
A chat on subreddit /r/me_irl
human
This has never been my experience. In all my years at school I never saw the bully get protected. In fact I saw teachers looking the other way fairly often when a known bully got stood up to. There were a few teachers that just didn’t intervene regardless but none of them actually tried to protect the bullies. 

Our school district had a “zero tolerance” rule though. Which meant that if you were even just watching a fight you got the same punishment as if you were physically involved. Even if you had proof that you were jumped and just defending yourself, if you threw a single punch you got in trouble for fighting. Most of the principals didn’t do anything about bullying unless there was concrete evidence of it happening and it couldn’t be interpreted any other way. Which is why most teachers didn’t bother reporting minor stuff. 

Teachers often don’t have as much power as students and parents think they do.
gpt
"Zero tolerance" is so much in favor of bullies it easily counts as "protecting the bullies". Getting a reaction is what they want, and if that reaction is followed with extra punishment that is just bully heaven.

Bullying hardy ever takes the form of "getting jumped".