PUPILS are being urged to get one-to-one health advice by text messaging school nurses.

Health chiefs hope the service will let worried youngsters ask questions they would otherwise be too frightened or embarrassed to raise.

They can send a text message from their mobile to a number advertised in Blackburn with Darwen's secondary schools and are then texted a reply from a school nurse.

The scheme, launched this month, has proved popular as it guarantees anonymity, said Louise Wilkinson, one of the Primary Care Trust (PCT) nurses behind the project.

Questions have involved bullying as well as worries about sight and hearing.

Mrs Wilkinson said: "We thought this would be a good way of offering advice and help for sensitive health issues that young people might find difficult to discuss face to face with health professionals.

"The response in the first weeks of the scheme has been very good and school nurses are finding extra benefits too.

"For example, it's a very useful way of correcting misinformation about all sorts of sensitive health matters and it's also highlighting aspects of health that need to be included as health education topics. We have been especially impressed by the number of thank you texts young people have sent." She said the idea came about after the team learned about a similar scheme in Cambridge and because young people prefer to use text messaging as a way of communicating.

A spokesman for charity Childline said: "We know from our experience that some children are very reluctant to for help, especially if they feel embarrassed.

"Something that gives children that chance to get vital information they would otherwise not ask for is very welcome."

Gareth Dawkins, headteacher at Darwen Moorland High School in Holden Fold, said: "Any mechanism for kids that are at risk to be able to tell somebody has to be a positive. If this is a medium where children feel they can tell someone in a confidential way then all the better."