EIGHT months ago, Chelsea was a prisoner in her own home. After suffering years of bullying, she had attempted suicide three times.

Today, the change in her is dramatic. She is organising parties, learning Japanese and dreaming of a future as a forensic scientist. Her transformation is due to a revolutionary learning centre for the victims of bullying.

At first it was name-calling, but at the age of 10 it became physical. When Chelsea moved to her secondary school, a bully moved with her and it began again. Her mother complained to the school and the bully was taken out of her classes.

“But then all her friends started threatening me and saying, ‘If you don’t stop telling on her, we’ll kill you’. It got so that I wouldn’t go outside and didn’t see anyone,” Chelsea, 14, said.

“I stopped going to school, going outside at all. I couldn’t get away because they lived down my street.”

The change from terrorised withdrawn child to ambitious teenager came only once she started going to the Red Balloon Learner Centre in Cambridge, the country’s only “intensive care” programme of education for bullied children.

Since 1996, about 80 children have passed successfully through Red Balloon and more than three quarters have returned to mainstream schooling or employment. Now Red Balloon, a charity backed by Barnardo’s, is hoping to open three more schools in Harrow, Colchester and Norwich. Each would have 12 pupils.

As the kettle boils on the Aga and the homemade gingerbread is passed round, pupils and teachers chat and laugh. With just 12 children to 16 staff, it is not an ordinary school. Shelves are crammed with books and there is a comforting scruffiness about the family-sized Victorian house.

“It’s a process of opening up, peeling back the layers,” Jo Bluffery, 44, the creative arts counsellor, said. “They have meals together, which opens up conversations. Then there are the one-on-one classes, where teachers ask questions and build on successes very quickly. So it’s very hard to remain withdrawn for long.”

Breadmaking, poetry and singing all help to rebuild pupils’ confidence. But there is no counselling in the centre founded nine years ago by Carrie Herbert, a no-nonsense teacher, who is passionate about returning self-confident pupils to society. The school, which teaches children up to GCSE level, is independent and fees are £8,000-£10,000 a year.

Some stay a term, others for two years. Those who wish to may take lessons in Parkside, a secondary school next door. This year all 12 children have been referred and are paid for by local education authorities from Cambridge and the surrounding counties. Parents are only charged if their children attended fee-paying schools while bullied.

Al Aynsley-Green, the Children’s Commissioner, said that England’s 11.8 million children face an epidemic of bullying which must be tackled. Ofsted is now questioning children and measuring schools on how they deal with the problem.

Bullying cannot itself be eliminated, Dr Herbert said, but it can be stopped. While there is no magic bullet, she insisted that schools could overcome many instances if children “spent more time learning to be a human being than about Henry VIII”. As a result, Dr Herbert gathers her pupils for an hour of “circle time” every Friday to get issues off their chest. She said that this is possible in bigger schools, if teachers take time out in class to confront the unhappiness, rather than leaving it in the playground. “We shouldn’t base schools on exam results. Teachers must deal with the health of the classroom,” she said.

The Government tackles the problem of bullying through the Anti-Bullying Alliance, which practises a “no blame” policy. In the past financial year, the Government gave £480,000 to the ABA, but so far there has been little outward improvement.

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