Press Association
Monday November 20, 2006 5:48 PM
Parents of bullies could be forced to attend parenting classes or face a £1,000 fine, Education Secretary Alan Johnson has warned.
His message came as campaigners said 20,000 children were skipping school every day to avoid being bullied.
Mr Johnson said he wanted to create a "zero tolerance" culture towards bullying in an effort to stamp out the "despicable" and "intolerable" phenomenon.
New powers under the Education Act would allow parenting orders to be imposed on mothers and fathers of bullies, with a £1,000 fine if they failed to comply, he said.
He also unveiled an extra £480,000 for a peer mentoring scheme for children in schools to encourage the reporting of bullying. In some cases, he said, pupils found it easier to report bullying to their peers than to teachers.
He told GMTV: "Children hate the thought of bullying, and they hate being bullied obviously, but they also hate the thought of their friends being bullied.
"It is a horrible, despicable thing, so once you ensure that there is a zero tolerance regime on bullying, then you can start to change the culture."
His remarks come as Anti-Bullying Week begins with research from the charity Beatbullying showing an estimated 20,000 children a day skip school to avoid being bullied.
The charity has urged ministers and teachers to realise that many truants are victims and not "lazy troublemakers".
John Quinn, from Beatbullying, said it was shocking that the charity's report had found that a third of all truancy resulted from children being bullied.
