Even when he changed schools, his fear of being in a school playground led to him putting his fingers down his throat every lunchtime. It was only when the school captain at his new small rural school took him under his wing that he finally began to relax and realise his days of being physically hurt were over.

When he was in prep, Jessica’s son was fine. In grade one it all went downhill. "He couldn't write his own name anymore. He was depressed and down," Jessica said.

The principal told Jessica her son was just "playing up" but he finally revealed he was being bullied by an older boy, including being told he would "slit his mum's throat in her sleep".

When her son pointed out his bully to Jessica in the playground, he swore at her, threw her son to the ground and stepped on him, badly injuring his wrist and bruising his kidneys.

When Jessica approached a nearby teacher, she was told: "Boys will be boys. (Your son) was asking for it".

Jessica instantly withdrew her son from the school. She also rang the Catholic Education Office and the Ballarat diocese but was told the issue had been resolved by leaving the school.

"He still talks about it daily. He's still anxious someone is going to hurt me in my sleep. I went to the police but they said to discuss it with the school principal.He's stopped the (harming) attempts but now he talks about revenge constantly and he suffers from depression.

"In prep, he was the class clown. His teacher called him the "pesky rabbit". But in grade one it all stopped. “He never laughed, he never smiled."

* Ross’s daughter was a happy little girl when she started in prep at the same school. Only a few months later, she was wetting the bed, didn't want to eat and hated going to school.

It eventually turned out she was being bullied but the school told Ross she had "brought it all on herself".

"It got to the stage where we couldn't get her to school,” he said.

Ross’s son started at the same school and the bullying was more physical.

"He was kicked in the face while he was on the ground," Ross said.

"They were picking on him, taking his lunch. They were giving him a hiding and any kid who played with him was scared off. They were even scaring his own brother off."

Ross said his son was born with limited hearing which caused speech delays. "He copped it the worst of the three. He's seeing a psychologist because he's still so angry.”

Ross said he and his wife continually asked for appointments with the principal but couldn't get to see him. "It's just frustrating when your kids are getting hurt. How far do you go to protect your kids?"

Eventually he pulled all three children out of the school and said he hasn't experienced any difficulties at their new state school.

* Bob and Sue have meticulously documented every interaction with the school.

It fills a folder as they battled to stop their two children being bullied to the point their eight-year-old daughter was coming home covered in bruises every day for three months after being shoved to the ground constantly.

Eventually their daughter restrained her bully when she went to attack her by pulling her hands behind her back and she was reprimanded by the school.

"The school was furious because we had encouraged (her) to stand up for herself," Bob said.

Bob and Sue's daughter has learning difficulties and suffers from anxiety linked to the bullying. Their son also has OCD traits and was regularly picked on, including being tackled to the ground and jumped on by a group of older boys, resulting in neck and back pain and migraines.

"Every time our children were bullied, we were there on their front doorstep," Bob said. "But the principal was just full of lots of 'I'm going to do's".

Their daughter's bullying started in prep with name calling and social isolation and escalated into the physical violence where she was being thrown to the ground. On July 17, 2014, Bob and Sue pulled their children out of the school. Both of their children now see psychologists, are on medication and suffer ongoing emotional trauma.

However, their new school has been very welcoming. "The kids still have hiccups but they are being dealt with," Bob said.

However, the stress worsened Sue's depression she has suffered since teenage hood and she was hospitalised. "It nearly ruined my family," Sue said. "But we haven't done anything wrong. They just didn't like it when we would stand up and say 'we don't like this'.

Bob said they had to stand back as a family and say 'this is so wrong'. "Not one part of me as a father said I should be leaving them in their care."

* Mary has a similar story, with her daughter being constantly physically and verbally abused for three years.

She was punched, kicked, hit and called names until she eventually stopped eating. In desperation, Mary also pulled her children out of the school, which she says has been a common trend over the past three years.

*All names have been changed.

Michael's 11-year-old daughter has been bullied at a different Catholic primary school for the past three years.

She has been called names like "fat pig" and "fat piece of ....", had water spat in her face and constantly been told she will be "taken down" with martial arts moves.

Eventually she told her father she "didn't want to be here anymore".

Michael and his partner have followed all the right procedures and contacted the school every time it happened - but nothing ever changed.

"They just didn't deal with the situation at all," Michael said.

Michael said the school eventually told him: "We may not be able to stop the bullying but we can deal with it", which left him flabbergasted.

Michael said his daughter hates school and wants to be removed but "we shouldn't have to".

"The school is continually failing in its duty of care towards (my daughter) over a long period of time.

“(My wife) and I, as a family, are left to deal with the fallout of a once much happier child before they are bulled to the point of giving up and hating life."

Michael’s daughter has since been offered counselling by the school and the school finally emailed him it's anti-bullying policy on August 11. 

However, it was only ratified at a school council meeting on August 10, meaning there has been no bullying policy in place prior to then.

Michael has contacted the Catholic Education Office, the Ballarat diocese and even the parish priest but has received no response.

* Kate's daughter is friends with Michael's daughter and was also subjected to name calling and being spat on by the same bully for nearly a year.

"My daughter is quite assertive and she was getting quite upset by the bullying but that's why they kept doing it because they knew they could get a rise out of her," Kate said.

"Every day I'd come to work and wonder how long it would be until I got a phone call from the school to come and pick her up.

“I was up there daily by the end of it."

When Linda had to take her daughter to hospital with badly bruised tendons in her fingers from being bent backwards, she decided enough was enough.

She set up the Stop Bullying Ballarat Facebook page two weeks ago, which now has nearly 700 members.

She has also set up a petition calling for a government investigation into bullying in schools.

"I know how bad the bullying situation is in Ballarat,” Linda said. “First and foremost this is about the children being bullied but I wanted to bring to attention the fact that bullying effects the entire family.

“(It affects) parents especially as we are the ones who worry not only about their current safety but what's coming in the future.

“I want the government to take some responsibility for it. I want them to put laws in place. The reason I'm doing this is because I want them to stop my kid being picked on at school.”

 Linda knows about bullying from personal experience, with all three of her children having been bullied at different times.

This year, her prep aged daughter went from being happy and excited about school to quiet, withdrawn and angry. Then she began bed wetting and screaming in her sleep, stopped eating and began getting anxious about going to school. 

Then she started coming home with bruises from being pushed off playground equipment and being pinched and punched.

"I want one legislation for every school across Victoria. If you have no luck with the school, you've got to have somewhere to go. We need to stamp out bullying."

An education department spokesman said they took bullying allegations very seriously and were committed to creating “safe and supportive environments in which all children and young people were empowered to lead happy, healthy and successful lives”.

“Bully Stoppers, Respectful Relationships, Safe Schools and eSmart are just some of the initiatives that are helping to address bullying in our schools,” the spokesman said.

“Every Victorian government school must include a statement about bullying and cyberbullying behaviours in the Rights and Responsibilities section of their Student Engagement Policy.

”Where students are affected by bullying, the department has a range of supports available including access to counselling.”

The Department of Education and Training’s Bully Stoppers online toolkit is located at education.vic.gov.au/bullystoppers.

School bullying needs a whole community effort to combat it, according to legal expert Dr Sally Varnham.

Dr Varnham, who wrote an article for online opinion website The Conversation titled ‘It shouldn’t take legal action for schools to take action on bullying’, also said she was sceptical about the effectiveness of anti-bullying policies and programs.

“In my view...what is required is massive changes in school cultures if the cycle is going to be broken,” Professor Varnham said.

“I feel that the problem has always been that schools approach bullying from a ‘crime and punishment’ perspective which is spectacularly ineffective in most cases.

“Disciplining bullies, often by school exclusion, doesn’t often change behaviour. It sends them outside school, jeopardising their schooling and perhaps their life’s chances, perhaps making them retaliate against the victims when they return to school, creating a ‘them and us’ atmosphere which doesn’t lead to their taking responsibility but rather it’s the school’s fault.

“The thing is that bullying is a community problem – not solely of the victim and the bully – and bullying behaviour in a school calls for a community response.

“All members of the school community should be responsible for the safety of everyone. 

“The whole school should believe that bullying is not acceptable behaviour and get rid of the ‘bystander’ syndrome which encourages it.”

Dr Varnham said several schools were already doing excellent work in this area, including having school community conferences and circles to develop a culture of “telling” and to create a space where bullies can see the harm they have caused and take responsibility for their actions.

She also said “knee jerk” short-term reactions and failing to work on changing the school culture didn’t do either the bully or the victim any favours.

“It impacts not only on the victim’s right to education but that of everyone in the school, particularly the bully who carries that behaviour out into the community, their jobs and their families.

“I think it’s definitely a community problem and call for parents, staff and importantly students to all work together rather than blaming”.

Dr Varnham, who is a leading expert in education law and policy, said bullying, if conducted outside school grounds, was criminal conduct.

She said schools were regarded as “in loco parentis”, giving them responsibility for their students within their environment under the National Safe Schools Framework.

Dr Varnham said schools could be legally responsible for bullying that takes place on their grounds if they “knew or ought to have known of the risk, were in a position to take action and didn’t do so or failed to do so effectively”.

“There is now settled authority that school authorities may be vicariously responsible for harm resulting from intentional criminal acts of those under their control, such as teachers. The whole area is extremely fraught for schools.”

Catholic Education Office Ballarat director Audrey Brown says child protection officers are a newly established role in local schools.

“Their responsibilities include making sure all children feel safe and are safe when they are at school,” Ms Brown said.

She also said five schools in the Ballarat diocese are currently undergoing the Keeping Safe: Child Protection Curriculum training.

“This aim is to help children and young people learn how to recognise and report abuse and develop ways of protecting themselves from abuse.

“Dealing with bullying behaviours, developing a culture where students feel safe in telling trusted people of their concerns, and knowing that they will be listened to are all elements of this curriculum.

“It is expected that all schools will adopt the curriculum as training becomes available.”

Ms Brown said the Catholic Education Office took its commitment to create learning environments very seriously.

“The CEOB and schools use the National Safe Schools Framework as a reference point so all of our schools have systems and processes in place to help students learn that bullying and violence are never okay.”

She said all schools acted immediately on incidents and they were dealt with as a matter of priority.

Safety Management Plans are established for both the “bullied” and the “bully” to ensure natural justice applied, with practitioners, such as former principals, psychologist and wellbeing officers, brought in if needed.

“We strive to ensure all Catholic schools are safe schools and the protection of children in our care is a very high priority.”

Oscar Yildiz knew he needed to take action when a 14-year-old girl threw herself in front of a train after a selfie was leaked on social media.

As the then Moreland City mayor, he also had the influential and philanthropic friends to help him set up the Bully Zero Foundation.

“What we do is try and save lives,” Mr Yildiz said. “If people treated each other with respect all the time, then poor behaviour wouldn’t be demonstrated.”

Mr Yildiz takes the foundation into schools, workplaces and community groups, empowering students, teachers and parents alike to take on bullying.

“The thing that’s going to stop bullying is a change in behaviour. If you see poor behaviour, don’t ignore it. Be an upstander, not a bystander. Bullying can stop in 10 seconds if a bystander becomes an upstander.”

Mr Yildiz said bullying in schools usually showed an “instability to rudeness and poor behaviour”.

“And I would say to them that you’re not meeting your duty of care.”

Bullying in schools is not just a Ballarat issue. 

A recent independent report by academic Ken Rigby across six Australian educational jurisdictions showed 15 per cent of students reported being bullied, most commonly in verbal and covert ways.

Only 47.8 per cent of students knew about their school’s anti-bullying policy and just 37.7 per cent reported the bullying.

The report also recommended all school community members become familiar with their anti-bullying policies, seek out and act upon student feedback on school actions, pay particular attention to vulnerable students, engage more effectively with bullied students, provide more anti-bullying training for teachers and conduct further research.

Helpful sites for parents to deal with bullying include: 

The Department of Education and Training Bully Stoppers resource at education.vic.gov.au/about/programs/bullystoppers/Pages/default.aspx; 

The National Centre Against Bullying at ncab.org.au/bullying-advice/;  and The Office of the Children’s eSafety Commissioner at esafety.gov.au/