Italy is to set up an anti-bullying task force to tackle bad behaviour among the nation's schoolchildren, Education Minister Maria Stella Gelmini said Friday.
''Bullying is an unpleasant and recurring reality and at the ministry we are organising a small task force to provide something more than a banal, stock response to the situation,'' she said.
Italian parents' association MOIGE welcomed the announcement, which comes on the heels of repeated incidents of bullying in Italian schools, both between pupils themselves and between children and their teachers.
''There needs to be national coordination on the phenomenon, which involves all the social players: we parents are in the front line, because we are the first to see the damage that bullying does to our children and we need to establish a constructive relationships with schools,'' said MOIGE's schools chief Bruno Iadaresta.
Interior Ministry Undersecretary Alfredo Mantovano said that both parents and schools needed to face their responsibilities over the issue.
''They must not rely exclusively on police forces and judicial authorities to deal with the problem,'' he said.
There have been a series of bullying incidents in schools this month, including a band of children in Viterbo who set fire to the hair of a 13-year-old boy and put out cigarettes on his arms.
On Thursday two boys in the southern city of Bari were detained by the police after they 'kidnapped' another child, releasing him only when a friend paid a 10-euro ransom.
Scuffles between pupils and teachers have also taken place in the past few weeks.
On Friday it transpired that a 15-year-old had tried to set a supply teacher's hair on fire with a cigarette lighter as she left a classroom after a maths lesson in Trieste earlier this month, while on Wednesday a 16-year-old at a school near Pavia was suspended for slapping a teacher.
Rome mayor Gianni Alemanno had to temporarily shut down a school in the Italian capital on May 7 after children spread worms through the classrooms and corridors.
In the last few years schools in Italy have been rocked by a string of bullying scandals, some of which have ended up on the Internet after the incidents were filmed by pupils on mobile phones.
According to a study released in December by the Italian Pediatric Society, bullying has risen by 6% in the last two years with almost three-quarters of young teenagers between the ages of 12 and 14 saying they had either witnessed or been affected by incidents.
More boys than girls said they had some experience of bullying: 75.6% compared to 69.1%.
