I wanted to learn. That was too much to ask for!

I went to secondary school in 2006. It turned out to be the most distressing time of my life.

I found most students who attended the school very hostile and inconsiderate. The atmosphere was, for me, very intimidating and stressful.

In my first year I was intimidated by other people in my school - they would give me dirty looks and push and shove me in the corridors.

My grades and confidence dropped very soon after starting the school. I don’t think the bullies understood what they were doing or how I felt because they were so insensitive. A few months into the school year I was attacked by a student two years older than me. She pulled me down onto the ground backwards by my hair and kicked and punched me. I was shocked and very distressed.

Every day as soon as I got home I would go to bed and fall asleep. When I got into year 8 things got worse.

The students started shouting out degrading and aggressive comments to me and I started to have panic attacks whenever I was at school because of the stress.

At the start of year nine I was threatening to jump out the window on the top floor of my house if my mum sent me to school again. My mum decided to remove me from the school and home educate me. This was the very last resort as she had already been into the school many times. She wrote a letter about all the awful things that had happened to the head teacher and he never replied once.

The question that I want to ask you is whether an adult would work in this sort of environment? And would you take legal action if you experienced this level of aggression in the workplace?