RACISM in schools across Hampshire and Southampton rose by ten per cent last year, the Daily Echo can reveal.

Insulting jokes, abusive graffiti and offensive comments were the most common types of complaints by pupils.

At least 13 out of 854 recorded incidents were described as violent attacks in figures obtained by the Daily Echo.

Many youngsters complained of being verbally abused, pushed and jostled in the playground because of their nationality or the colour of their skin.

In the vast majority of cases the perpetrator was a white, British child while the ethnic groups with the highest number of victims were African, black Caribbean and Indian. White British children were also victims in a significant number of cases.

Hampshire schools reported 657 incidents took place throughout 2004 compared to 549 reported in 2003, although this is partly due to more schools (99 per cent compared to 91 per cent) submitting their findings to education bosses.

Meanwhile, in Southampton more than a third of the city's primary and secondary schools did not bother to let education bosses know how many racial incidents they had.

Of the 60 per cent of schools that reported their figures back there was an overall drop (12 per cent) in the number of incidents from 225 in 2003 to 197 in 2004.

The highest proportion occurred in the playground during playtime and lunchtime with the rate of reported incidents in primary schools nearly three times that of secondary.

Hampshire's executive member for education Councillor David Kirk said he was pleased that more schools were fulfilling their legal duty and reporting details of racial incidents.

"It highlights the greater awareness of the importance of tackling the issue in schools and a more mature understanding of what influence schools can have and a firm baseline for the future.

"It is essential for the county council to have a detailed understanding of the scale of racial incidents in our schools and to ensure support continues to be provided."

Southampton City Council's race development officer Don John said that efforts were being made to encourage more schools to complete their incident reports.

"We know that racial incidents are under reported in schools," he said.

Mr John said primary schools were much more active than secondaries when it came to recording racist attacks.

A Southampton City Council spokesman said work was being done to increase the number of schools fulfilling their legal duty.

"It is something the council is aware of and we're improving the return rate.

"It;s being dealt with at a high level but also at a basic level, regular e-mails and telephone calls are made to schools to chase up data. Some schools of course have no incidents to report and because of this they fail to comply."

Anver Jeevanjee, founder and president of the Southampton-based Cultural Diversity Advisory Group to the Media, said: "If these sort of incidents are happening they should be properly analysed about where they are happening, such as in the playground."

He added that he was concerned that a high proportion of schools in Southampton were not properly recording their racial incidents.

"This is a real problem and there should be some sort of compulsion to make them submit their incident reports."