In your editorial Bullying on TV (TMID, 24 January), you spoke at length about the need to protect children from bullying, especially when this takes place in front of the cameras.

I think that more should also be done to protect children from bullying at school. The media should take a deeper interest in this phenomenon, and not only speak about it when some serious incidents are reported.

A lot goes on in our schools and, unfortunately, most of its goes unnoticed. And yet so many children are silently suffering a daily ordeal when they go to school. Ask around and you will find many parents who will tend you what a struggle it is to send their child to school simply because he or she is afraid of being bullied.

What are the school authorities doing to control this bullying? Don’t they realise that this kind of behaviour is negatively affecting so many children?

Children ganging up against a few timid others is a common happening in our schools, and I am afraid that not enough attention is being given to this by the school authorities, including teachers.

Bullied children do not speak up about the problem out of fear that it would get worse, so it is up to the parents to speak up for them if they notice something is going wrong, and also up to the teachers to be on the lookout for inappropriate behaviour so as to try to stop it immediately.

Mary Micallef

Birkirkara