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Thanks for all your thoughts and stories guys, it good to see that you managed to come of it and still be the good people you were. You are right, a lot of it is mental and as bad as it sounds, we did say to him that sometimes the only way to stop these things is to stand up for yourself, my husband taught him how to get a good first punch in. As he put it, if you get them hard enough and fast enough right on the nose then they are too dazed to respond for a minute or two and you can hopefully get back with your friends by then! At the end of the day, it's just not in his nature and in a way, I wouldn't want that to change about him.
We did ask him about wanting to change schools but he was non-commital (not surprisingly) as he will just not tell us what he wants! Our other nearest school already has about 3 or 4 kids who used to be in his class in it, one of which he was really friendly with.
As I said, things seem to have settled down a bit, but we are strongly considering sending him to the catholic high school rather than our catchment school. Our catchment school is really well known for it's sports teams and he is not a team sport person, the catholic school is known to be very nurturing (it has about 25% non-catholics). It also starts earlier and finishes earlier than the other school and all pupils take a bus there so it would mean he is not likely to encouter groups of these boys when walking home. His best friend will be going to yet another High School I suspect as his older sister goes there.
Anyway thanks once again everyone - I will look back over your suggestions again and work through what I can. Ax