Last year racist bullying saw children in England excluded from primary and secondary schools almost 4,000 times. As part of Radio 1's bullyproof anti-bullying campaign, Aston Merrygold from JLS has been talking to BBC Switch presenter Anthony Baxter about his experience of being a victim of this type of abuse.

At 14 Aston joined a football team that some of his friends were in. He was the only black member of the team but says he never thought that would be a problem.

"When you first start in a team, people start to get comfortable with you and you start to make friends," he said. "You have a laugh, and all mates take the mick out of each other, but it got to the point where they'd start making jokes about things that were irrelevant. Skin colour started coming into."

More on this story from the BBC: JLS Aston: I was racially bullied

It's Anti-Bullying Week from November 16-20, 2009. Please click here if you can hold an event to help raise funds for Bullying UK.