A survey published today by a leading bullying prevention charity has found that one in four school students admits to being bullying – often violently - because of their religion.

Beatbullying, which runs interfaith bullying prevention programmes, said its research indicated that that there was little provision for young people to talk about their faith and that almost half of young people do not talk about religious or faith issues at all.

The survey of 819 young people also found a degree of religious segregation, with 20 per cent of the young people surveyed saying that their circle of friends consisted mainly of people from the same religious background.

Emma-Jane Cross, Chief Executive of Beatbullying said, “The findings from our survey clearly indicate the lack of support and direction our young people have to openly discuss and understand faith based issues with their peers.

“Beatbullying worries that this lack of cohesion is cultivating at best a lack of understanding and at worst a lack of tolerance of other faiths.”

The survey recorded a number of positive results, with close to 50 per cent of respondents saying they had a religious belief and 37 per cent of those saying they practised their religion.

Beatbullying’s government-funded programmes to prevent religiously motivated bullying have proven highly successful, with participating schools experiencing a 45 per cent reduction in incidences of faith-based bullying.

“Beatbullying’s work proves that by providing outlets for young people to discuss the issues that matter to them, we can effectively reduce anti-social and violent behaviours between young people,” said Ms Cross.

“As a result, the Government must encourage and resource faith community organisations who are working with local, regional and central government to promote social cohesion, tolerance and commonality.”

She urged the Government to carry out research into the extent of faith-based bullying among young people and draw up new guidelines for schools.

Ms Cross added, “Faith-based bullying must be included as a category when Government legislates to require schools to record all incidents of bullying across their school environment.”