A Crawley woman suing schools chiefs for allegedly failing to protect her from bullies was once pushed in front of an oncoming car, a court heard.

Leah Bradford-Smart, 19, is seeking £75,000 damages from West Sussex County Council over an alleged three-year school bullying ordeal.

She claims she suffered post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of bullying.

Ms Bradford-Smart claimed the episode with the car took place in her third and final year at Ifield Middle School, Crawley, while waiting for the bus home.

Under questioning from West Sussex County Council barrister Edward Faulks QC, she told how a fellow pupil pushed her into the path of a car.

She told the High Court in London: "I was pushed into the road. You don't push someone into the road unless there is intent behind it.

"There were about 40 other children standing at the bus stop, all laughing and jeering and finding it hysterical."

She later told her mother, Susan, about the incident, but did not mention it to her class teacher or headmaster.

Ms Bradford-Smart said at first she found it "very difficult to integrate" into the school, in part due to a former friend "completely ignoring" her for the first fortnight.

She had not expected to be "welcomed with open arms" into the new school but was shocked by the reception she received.

At one point during her first year she was threatened and chased around the playground.

She said: "I went to the dinner ladies and told them what was happening and they said to stop telling tales."

Ms Bradford-Smart said during her third year she and her mother experienced problems because a neighbour was related to a girl allegedly involved in the bullying.

She said: "They wrote obscenities about us on walls and we had eggs thrown at our house."

She said she had no idea why she had attracted such hostility.

The court heard that after spending three years at Ifield the teenager was educated at home for 12 months by her mother before resuming her education at Crawley College.

Mrs Bradford-Smart, of Poynings Road, Hyde Drive, West Ifield, said it was only after leaving Ifield school that she began to express her pain at the ordeal, eventually receiving psychiatric help.

While at Ifield she had always "bottled it up", but "when I left school it came out".

Defence lawyers say there was "very little, if any sign" that she was being bullied, also claiming that anything which occurred outside school gates was beyond the school's control.

The hearing was adjourned until tomorrow.