One pupil in two says bullying remains a problem, despite efforts to stamp it out

Bullying is still considered to be a big problem by more than half of schoolchildren despite years of official programmes to stamp it out, a survey showed yesterday.

Research for ChildLine, the children's charity, revealed that 51 per cent of primary pupils and 54 per cent of secondary pupils considered mental and physical abuse by other children to be a menace in their school. Half of primary school pupils and nearly one third of

secondary pupils said they had been a victim of bullying during the past term.

But despite the scale of the problem, two out of three secondary pupils said they would be afraid to tell a teacher that they were being bullied for fear of being labelled a "grass" and suffering further attacks. Almost a third of pupils thought that learning a martial art would be a better way of reducing bullying than informing the school authorities.

A separate report by Ofsted, the education watchdog, said bullying in schools was more widespread than adults sometimes acknowledged.

The Government responded by announcing a "zero tolerance" approach. Consultants would be appointed to help schools to stamp out bullying as part of a £470m behaviour and attendance programme.

Ivan Lewis, a junior Education minister, admitted that the Government had not given bullying enough priority in the past, but said his own experience as a victim made him determined to clamp down on it. "The stakes are very high for individual children and for the whole of society. In a civilised society there has to be zero tolerance of all forms of bullying," he said.

He added that a range of measures would be in place by this autumn. The proposals included "funding and training for all secondary schools in anti-bullying strategies and specialist consultants to help local education authorities tackle bullying", he said.

Esther Rantzen, ChildLine's chairwoman, said the helpline took about 20,000 calls from victims of bullying each year."The message that children are giving through this research can be heard loud and clear – many schools are simply not doing enough," she said.

The charity's report, Bullying: How To Beat It, urged schools to give children more influence when developing anti-bullying policies and make more use of children's friendships through peer support and mentoring programmes.

Christine Oliver of London University's Thomas Coram Research Unit, who polled almost 1,000 children for the report, said she was disturbed to find that children often felt it was "risky" to disclose that they were being bullied, partly because they got "mixed messages" on how to deal with it from grown-ups.

About six out of 10 children said they wanted to be involved in developing their school's anti-bullying initiatives. Schools that did not involve pupils had higher levels of bullying.

Ofsted's report, Bullying: Effective Action In Secondary Schools, also said the schools that were most successful at dealing with bullying were ones that "took full account of pupils' views". But it said no matter how many times teachers and parents told children to report any problems, there would always be some young people suffering in silence.

Inspectors concluded that they could not possibly judge whether bullying was now more common, because greater awareness and research meant today's cases attracted more attention.

The report, based on visits to six local education authorities in England, also urged headteachers to make more use of "positive peer pressure".

Both reports were launched at a ChildLine conference in Islington, north London.

Earlier, the Prime Minister's wife, Cherie Booth QC, who chaired the conference, called for adults to ensure that they listened to children. "It does seem astonishing, doesn't it, that ChildLine speaks to around 20,000 children and young people a year about bullying," she said. "We wouldn't hesitate to listen to adults about their problems and we certainly shouldn't hesitate to listen to children and young people too."

Minister tells of misery that lasted years

Ivan Lewis, the Education minister for young people, told an anti-bullying conference yesterday he was forced to endure nearly three years of bullying at his independent secondary school in Manchester.

Mr Lewis, 36, who has two children, told the ChildLine conference in London his ordeal stopped only after he fought one bully and suffered a broken nose. "I can still recall the sheer misery of being bullied," he said. "I remember the isolation and loneliness and I remember the feeling in the pit of my stomach as I set off for school. I remember the mental anguish and the numbness.

"I remember the daily hope that a teacher would come to my rescue. I remember my lack of motivation and the low grades which left me at the bottom of the class.

"I also recall how I felt when this began to change. The sheer joy of looking forward to every day. I do not want what happened to me to happen to any child. That is why we will do more as a government."