Websites such as YouTube, MSN and RateMyTeachers.com should be closed down to prevent the bullying of schoolchildren and staff online, teachers demanded yesterday.

Victims of cyber-bullying are vulnerable 24 hours a day, the annual conference of the Professional Association of Teachers (PAT) was told.

Teachers cite violence and poor behaviour as the most common reasons for leaving the profession and say that parents must do more to tackle bad attitudes. Last year 640 primary school pupils were suspended for racist or lewd and sexually abusive behaviour, including bullying.

Kirsti Paterson, of the union’s Highland and Western Isles federation, told the conference, in Harrogate, how a teacher she knew had been the subject of a death threat put online. A pupil at the school had posted a doctored picture of the teacher, headless, on the internet with the caption “You are dead” alongside it.

Ms Paterson said that this was just one example of children posting offensive mobile phone videos on websites, showing teachers as well as pupils being attacked or humiliated.

“Nowhere is safe from cyber-bullying. It can carry on 24/7 through mobile phones and in multiple forms online. Remarks, images posted online can easily be copied and made available to a global audience,” she said.

“In the short term, confronting this problem must be the closure of sites encouraging cyber-bullying.”

This year, a five-year study of 15,000 pupils by York St John University and Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh, revealed that up to a fifth of girls reported having been cyber-bullied and that since 2002 the number suffering from e-mail or text aggression had risen from 14.5 per cent to 20.6 per cent. The researchers reported that although other forms of bullying, such as name-calling and being hit or kicked in the playground, appeared to have dropped, bullying by text or e-mail had increased, particularly among girls.

Catriona Tait, a newly qualified primary teacher from Dundee, echoed her colleague’s concerns that new technology has become another means of intimidation for staff and pupils.

“According to the antibullying network, victims of cyber-bullying can feel even more isolated than those subjected to face-to-face bullying. For such indidviduals, the abuse can be 24 hours, with no sanctuary to hide from endless threats and torment,” she said.

“Just a few words entered into the video-sharing site YouTube and a number of short videos featuring members of staff were at my fingertips. Nobody should be subjected to such humiliation anywhere, let alone in their place of work,” she said, adding that she was also appalled by the public slating on RateMyTeachers. com, by people who had a “long-running grudge against the person who issued them a detention for forgetting their homework seven years ago”.

A spokesman for YouTube said that it was a community site used by millions and the vast majority used it responsibly. “Sadly, as with any form of communication, there is a tiny minority of people who try to break the rules. YouTube is part of the Government’s cyber-bullying task force, working closely with teachers’ unions and others. If teachers or anyone else see content that they think is inappropriate and breaks our guidelines then they can flag it and we will review it. If it does break our terms then we will remove it.”

Alan Johnson, when he was the Education Secretary, said that site providers had a moral duty to prevent pupils from posting offensive video clips that humiliated teachers or other children.

The Government will publish guidance on bullying in September and is expected to suggest that safe rooms be set up for victims of bullying and that schools identify hotspots where it is prevalent.

A website has been shutdown by police for showing violent stunts performed by teenagers.

Live Now, Die Later featured Michael Davies’s films of friends setting each other on fire and throwing themselves down stairs. Mr Davies, 18, of Rock Ferry, Merseyside, was spoken to by Lancashire Constabulary, but no criminal charges are to be brought.

Officers now want YouTube to stop using his footage. Inspector Andrea Bradbury said that the clips were a bad influence on children. adding: “Michael Davies is a very competent young man and it would be so much better to see him put his excellent skills to better use.”

Mr Davies said that anyone who copied his stunts was stupid.

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