By Hilary Wilce
Tommy Stenton was a bright British boy who lived through hell in his last year of primary school and his first year at secondary school. He was quiet and studious, so the other children picked on him for showing them up.
"We moved house and I had to change schools and had no friends, so I was just keeping my head down and getting on with my books when it started. It was name-calling and people pushing and shoving me around," he says.
"The teacher didn't help. She used to say to the other kids that they weren't doing as much work as me and they'd have to stay in at break, and they didn't like that, so they used to call me all sorts of names."
Stenton quickly started to hide his interest in his schoolwork.
"I decided if I didn't do as well, they wouldn't pick on me as much, so I used to try harder to get stuff wrong and act more stupid. I wasn't at the top of the class, and I wasn't at the bottom. When I went to secondary school, no one noticed because by then it was who I was."
It was Tommy's elder sister who found out how badly he was doing, recognised it was out of character and told his teachers.
"And after that it just got sorted."
His teachers encouraged him, he grew in confidence and found friends of an equal intelligence.
Natalie, 16, who lives in south-east England (and doesn't want to give her surname), is hoping that things will turn out as well for her younger brother Will, 11, who, like her, has been bullied for being clever.
"He'd come home from primary school and run straight up to his room because he didn't want us to see he was upset. And it's a lot worse for guys. They often don't have the same social skills as girls."
Will is now in secondary school and has his twin sister and two older sisters looking out for him. "If we see anything happening, we go over and say 'You alright, Will?' and that usually sorts it."
Natalie knows how important it is to get things sorted out. From about nine she was bullied for being smart and speaking up in class.
She says, "You come to realise the bullies are going to be the ones that fail. My dad was the only person in his street to go to grammar school and he got teased for it, but he saw that everyone else was still going to be there in 30 years and they are. He's the only one who got out."
A recent study of gifted children in nine state secondary schools, by researchers at Roehampton University, has confirmed that clever pupils, especially boys, can be bullied and will "dumb down" to fit in.
Being funny, good at sports and having a more disruptive pupil as a friend also helps. "Some pupils are able to maintain popularity with peers in spite of their high academic achievement," says Becky Francis, professor of education.
"What appears to be a fundamental facilitator of this is their physical appearance, and for boys, their physical ability at sport."
Today's pupils say that the popularity of American high-school films, which often feature stereotypical boy geeks, has made it worse.
They say that in "ordinary" state schools it often feels as if there aren't other intelligent pupils around, and they believe that teachers make it worse by not realising that bullying is going on.
Natalie says teachers need to pick up on bullying more. While Stenton thinks parents also need to change. "You need to know how your child is, and if you see a change then ask about it."
The bullying of "geeks", he says, goes on everywhere. - The Independent