"Some children in this classroom are not very happy about coming to school. From a scale of one to 10, how happy are you?"

The question is put to them by a guidance teacher from the anti-bullying section of the Education Division's Safe Schools Programme.

"Typically, there will be a whole range of replies, some rating their happiness on the low side, others in the middle, others high," said Vivien Cassar, one of the section's two guidance teachers.

"One or two of the pupils, however, will give a very low figure, one or even zero. That pupil will almost certainly be a target of bullying. Children are unhappy at school usually because they are teased, physically assaulted or rejected. And serious cases could leave lifelong scars."

The technique is used for pupils ranging from about Year 3 to Form 3. With the younger ones it takes the form of a story: animals go to school and talk about their experience and why they are happy or unhappy. The pupils easily identify with the situations and will unknowingly project their own feelings. The technique eventually leads them to uncover bullying behaviour.

"Eventually it emerges that a pupil is being harassed by another pupil. Very often it is their classmates who identify them both, telling us that one is sad because the other is teasing or pushing him or her about," said Ms Cassar, who works as a team with the section's other guidance teacher, Anna Satariano.

The technique works, she said, because it gives pupils the chance to speak out about what's worrying them while feeling safe about doing so by roping in the onlookers of the bullying incidents - the classmates. This has allowed the two guidance teachers to bring to light cases of bullying that have been going on for as long as three years.

"Only today, we came across a case in which a girl's lunch has been thrown on the floor and stamped on by some other girls every single day for the past term. The girl had never reported it."

Bringing the issue out in front of the whole class also prevents the bully from blaming the victim for telling tales. There is protection in a group when the bully has been identified by the whole class and any denials he may have put forward during the session rejected by his classmates. And any future attempt at revenge will certainly be noted by them.

The next step is to help the target of bullying take evasive action. Still in front of the whole class, the victim may be asked not to stay near the aggressor, or walk away when he approaches, or to assertively ask him to stop.

At the same time the rest of the class is learning what they must do if they were ever to become targets themselves. They are also taught how to help each other if victimised. An important factor, said Ms Cassar, is to make members of the class aware that excessive, repetitive teasing or jokes, taunting or name calling causes distress.

The case is then followed up by the unit or internally by the school through monitoring, although "it is certainly not a case of waving a magic wand to have an overnight solution. Some cases often take quite a while to sort out".

"We have received more than 150 referrals from schools, whether state, Church or private, since the beginning of the scholastic year," said Ms Cassar. "They range from minor cases of bullying to serious ones which the school on its own has been unable to solve. We have the advantage of having a lot of experience and a good overview of different strategies that have been tested."

When taking on individual cases the guidance teachers from the section will often speak to the parents and act as a buffer between them and the school. Besides the victim, they also talk to the bully and the bully's parents.

Part of the section's work is to run awareness raising sessions with groups of children, mainly through storytelling with the young and discussion with the older students. It also runs in-service training courses for teachers in the summer.

The girl whose lunch was thrown away every day is one of hundreds of bullying victims who suffer horribly in silence in schools throughout the islands. Recognition of this problem led to the anti-bullying unit being set up in line with a national policy on bullying issued by the Ministry of Education in 2000. The policy puts forward recommended guidelines and procedures for all schools in Malta and Gozo.

Reporting cases of bullying behaviour is not mandatory, as is, for example, child abuse, but one thing is certain: schools have an obligation to act in cases of bullying and try to prevent it. "It is the school that is ultimately responsible," said Ms Cassar.

The policy insists that "bullying is unacceptable, and everyone has the duty to report it immediately so that action can be taken for the benefit of the children". It goes on to say that the general effort to prevent bullying is the responsibility of the head of school.

One of its recommendations is that each school should appoint a person to take up an "anti-bullying" function, but so far very few have done so, said Ms Cassar.

She would also like to see more monitoring in areas where bullying tends to take place - such as the playground, toilets and on school transport - and work on building good relationships between the teachers and the pupils, so that the latter would feel safer in reporting cases.

"Bullying will never be eliminated altogether. But measures like this will help to reduce it."