Bullying is on the increase, in Bradford schools as elsewhere. A growing number of children are afraid to go into school and dread the journey there and back because of attacks and intimidation. Whether it be mere name-calling (which can be extremely distressing to the person repeatedly on the receiving end) or serious and fatal assaults like the case reported yesterday in which a Dorset teenager with a terror of water drowned after being thrown off a bridge, bullying is not something that any civilised society should tolerate.

Yet there still seems to be a reluctance on the part of many schools to treat it with the seriousness it demands. There remains a view that because bullying is part of life, we must all learn to deal with it in our own way. Unfortunately too many children are unable to learn to deal with it. They play truant to avoid it. They become withdrawn and ill. Some are driven to take their own lives.

It is a big problem - yet it is staggering that no-one knows just how big because schools are not obliged to log bullying incidents and the Department for Education and Science keeps no records.

All credit, then, to Bradford South MP Gerry Sutcliffe for calling for tougher regulation of bullying policies and procedures in response to a number of reports of serious attacks in schools across the district. An important first step must be to insist that every school takes every report of bullying seriously and records it to gauge the extent of the problem instead of continuing to deny that there is one.