YOU recently published a letter which addressed the issue of bullying in schools. In the letter our sports education company was mentioned (Teamtheme) as a recent 'stage' for a bullying occurrence.

It was implied that Teamtheme did not respond to the concerned parent when a complaint was made after her child was apparently targeted on one of our courses in Darwen.

I wish to reassure your readers that Teamtheme treat this particular issue very seriously and have a clear policy for dealing with it.

We do not ignore it and work very hard to combat it by giving children the chance to develop the positive side of their personality and sporting abilities.

Anyone reading our website at www.teamtheme.com will see that we address nutrition, confidence building, good social behaviour and literacy within our structured courses and also extol all of the positive virtues that emanate from involvement in sport.

Nine out of ten 'bullying' issues are a case of 'half a dozen of one and six of the other.' However, we are trained to recognise and deal with genuine targeting of individuals.

In the case of the complainant, subject of the letter, we dealt with the mails efficiently, in detail and to the point where the 'victim' returned to our course and completed it successfully alongside all of the other children.

In fact this particular child had been victimised within normal school time and this simply spilled over onto our course where it was spotted and dealt with. We obviously empathise and sympathise with the child and her family.

Teamtheme provide a very safe and fun environment in which children can develop, grow and gain in confidence.

We are the country's number one provider of sport, fun and youth development working in hundreds of schools with thousands of children.

We are backed by the Prince's Trust and work for Children in Need whilst supporting our partner schools with genuinely free sports equipment.

It would be sad if one unsubstantiated letter could undo all of the positives we create around East Lancashire schools.

Paul Littlefair, Managing director, Teamtheme