25 September 2006

The London Borough of Merton is using the Internet in an effort to stamp out racism and bullying in schools.

A new web-based system will be employed in a bid to provide effective support to pupils by monitoring incidents of abuse in real-time.

Officials hope that the new system, named Sentinel, will be adopted by all of the schools across the borough, Publictechnology.net reports.

Michael Sutherland, research and information manager at Merton Council, remarked: "Sentinel is an extremely useful tool for individual schools and for the Borough as a whole – it will give us a valuable baseline of where work needs to be done and where we are having the most success in combating racism and bullying."

He added that system, which should enable better reporting of incidents, will lead to more effective understanding, planning and intervention, culminating in the promotion of equality and eradication of incidents of abuse.

The borough has 43 primary schools with nurseries, eight secondary schools and three special schools, with 24,000 pupils.

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