Next Step : Britain Takes Steps to Stop Bullying, the Ugly Downside to School System : From fictional Tom Brown to young Prince Charles, it’s a student’s nightmare.

Prince Charles, in his hot-selling biography published just months ago, described the bullying he, the heir to the British throne, received as a shy young student at austere Gordonstoun School in Scotland. He recalled the treatment as being meted out “maliciously, cruelly and without respite.”

The recollections of many British political figures of their school days--either at posh private institutions such as Eton or state schools--are replete with examples of being bullied, or of bullying, and the practice continues today.

It is an ugly downside to British culture, captured by author Thomas Hughes in 1857 in “Tom Brown’s Schooldays,” a fictional account of life at Rugby School. The book’s bully is Harry Flashman, whom Tom describes as “that blackguard Flashman, who never speaks to one without a kick or an oath.”

Over the years since, countless victims of school bullying have been shattered by the practice. Some have committed suicide. Michele Elliott, director of a volunteer organization called Kidscape, says today’s parents are angry and frustrated by the feeling that the educational system offers no protection to their children.

In recent months, however, the government and volunteer agencies have launched a campaign to analyze the problem among students age 5 to 17 in primary and secondary schools.

Late last year, the national Department for Education published a 142-page booklet on bullying--how to recognize it and stop it--for use by teachers in Britain’s 25,000 state schools.

The campaign came as at a time when incidents of bullying are on the rise:

* A 12-year old girl in Lancashire hanged herself, having hidden her unhappiness over school bullying from her parents and teachers.

* A Nottinghamshire student with cerebral palsy sued school authorities for failing to protect her from bullies. A judge said her problems did not amount to bullying and suggested that the law needed a more precise definition.

* Three Shropshire parents, desperate over the bullying of their children, bundled a ringleader of the bullies into their car with the intention of giving him a fright. They were given a minimal penalty by a sympathetic judge.

* In Northern Ireland, a 13-year-old Belfast schoolgirl, who friends said could not tell her parents about daily bullying, swallowed a fatal dose of pills from the family medicine chest.

The Department for Education study was commissioned three years ago and compiled by researchers at the University of Sheffield. At the same time, the problem was being addressed by voluntary agencies such as Childline, Kidscape and Parents Against Bullying, which provide help to families of both victims and bullies.

The Sheffield study found that in primary schools, at least 27% of students were victims of bullying, while 12% admitted bullying others. In secondary schools, the equivalent figures dropped to 10% and 6%.

The researchers defined bullying as “deliberately hurtful repeated behavior against those who find it difficult to defend themselves.”

The report concluded: “No schools were found to be without bullying. Both boys and girls bully others,” often within the school grounds, playgrounds or other areas.

The victims tended to be shy, to lack close friends and to come from an overprotective family environment of a different racial or ethnic group from the majority of their schoolmates. Occasionally, the study said, the aggrieved was a “provocative victim,” a nuisance.

The Sheffield study emphasized that although the majority of pupils might not be involved, they are likely to know that bullying is happening, and it argued that bullying should not be suffered “in silence.”

Researchers proposed various ways to handle the situation. Prof. Peter Smith, who directed the study at Sheffield, said in an interview, “We think that every school should have an anti-bullying policy--but schools may emphasize different ways to deal with the problem.”

Mary MacLeod, Childline’s director of counseling, points out that being bullied is an emotional ordeal for children and that girls often use psychological pressure instead of the physical bullying favored by boys.

“Children are often very ashamed to admit they are bullied,” she said. “They find it hard to ask for help. Being bullied has a profound effect on their self esteem. They feel isolated. They reach a point where they feel: I just can’t take it anymore.”

MacLeod was struck by the number of children who called a bullying hot line when a test was run by a British Broadcasting Corp. television program last year.

“We received thousands of calls from bullied children,” she said. “We believe a quarter of children in primary school may be bullied at some point, and the incidence becomes smaller as they get older. Older children learn additional social mores.”

Parents often feel helpless and take children out of school. But moving children from one school to another doesn’t necessarily solve the problem.

Similarly, extreme sanctions like expelling bullies from a school often simply moves the problem to the second school.

The behavior usually stems from the home, the experts conclude: Bullies are often jealous of new siblings; they have emotional insecurities; boys need to feel macho, to dominate.

Their parents don’t recognize that they are bullies, and their actions are not halted.

“One problem,” MacLeod said, “is that we parents ourselves bully children. People get bullied at work. The pattern is not difficult to transmit to children.”

Experts such as MacLeod and Charlotte Redman of the Department for Education believe that the best way to reduce the problem is through widespread information, bringing the situation into the open. Then a school can issue an anti-bullying document and deal with the problem through group seminars or individual counseling.

“There is no single prescription,” MacLeod said. “One aim is to make the child no longer an interesting target, for the bullying group can quickly sense a vulnerable child.”

But care must be taken, she said, in order to ensure that the bullied child is not publicly singled out by a headmaster--that tends to make the situation worse for the student.

“The main thing is to inform everyone about bullying,” Redman agreed. “Then the individual school can look over the various options, with parents and children, and decide what is best for them.”

Sheffield’s Smith would like to see a backup study run within a year to determine how well the Department for Education’s booklet, “Bullying: Don’t Suffer in Silence,” has worked.

For instance, schools that assign teachers to the playgrounds--a frequent area of bullying--rather than a volunteer parent might have better results, he said.

The recent activity has presented a fresh look at an old problem. Consider young Tom Brown and his roommate, East, at Rugby more than a century ago, settling in for the night. Hughes writes:

“A noise and steps are heard in the passage, the door opens, and in rush four or five great fifth-form boys, headed by Flashman in his glory.

“Tom and East slept in the furthest corner of the room, and were not seen at first.

“ ‘Gone to ground, eh?’ roared Flashman; ‘Push ‘em out then, boys! Look under the beds.’ And he pulled up the little white curtain of the one nearest him. ‘Who-o-op,’ he roared, pulling away at the leg of a small boy, who held on tight to the leg of the bed, and sung out lustily for mercy.

“Here, lend a hand, one of you, and help me pull out this young howling brute. Hold your tongue, sir, or I’ll kill you.”

If it’s any consolation to victims, the bully Flashman was resurrected by novelist George MacDonald Fraser in his modern and popular Flashman series, and the bully of 1857 remains by his own admission “a scoundrel, a liar, a cheat, a thief, a coward--and, oh yes, a toady.”

Furthermore, Graham Hedges, a teacher at Rugby School, said, “there is no comparison with the Rugby of 140 years ago. Bullying is not a problem.”