Imagine waking up every morning and dreading the prospect of what new humiliations or embarrassment you'll have to go through that day.

Sadly, every day thousands of school students wake up with exactly that feeling.

They don't want to get out of bed and go to school because they know they'll be bullied.

They know they'll be made to feel ashamed and worthless in front of their peers maybe because of their appearance, or their family, or because a bully has just randomly decided to target them.

No child should have to go through this. But too many do.

A 2009 Edith Cowan University report on covert bullying gave us a staggering statistic: one in six students are bullied weekly. A quarter of students between Year 4 and Year 9 reported being bullied at least once over the few weeks the research was undertaken. One in five students has experienced some form of cyber-bullying.

This means every family either has a child, or knows one, who is being bullied at school.

As School Education Minister I know how big an issue bullying is for parents, teachers and kids.

I hear plenty of gut-wrenching stories about what some students go through at school and the impact it has on them.

But I also hear plenty of good news stories, schools that have put in place strategies to stamp out bullying, or of young bullies who have learned their lesson and changed their behaviour.

Schools are doing a lot of fantastic things that other schools, and governments, can learn from.

That's why I've convened a summit of teachers, parents, child psychologists and young people who are meeting at Parliament House tomorrow to talk about what we know works in schools and what we can be doing as a community to deal with bullying.

Often parents feel overwhelmed if their child is the victim of bullying. They don't know what to do or how to help.

And other parents learn, to their dismay, that their child is bullying another, but need some