A ‘safer’ Facebook-style website is being trialled in two of the district’s primary schools to try to ensure pupils steer clear of cyber-bullying.

National charity Beatbullying says social networking websites are hotspots for bullying. A third of 11 to 16-year-olds who have been cyber-bullied were targeted on Bebo and more than one in ten on Facebook, according to the charity’s research.

School web design company WebAnywhere, based at the Aire Valley Business Centre in Keighley, has come up with its own website – Student Jotter – to combat online abuse.

It is being trialled at Our Lady of Victories Catholic Primary School and St Anne’s Catholic Primary School, in Keighley.

The website is designed to ensure teachers can monitor what students are accessing.

Sean Gilligan, who founded WebAny-where in 2003, said: “Social media platforms have many positive points so we wanted to take those and make it appropriate for a learning environment. Technology plays a key role in the classroom and it is important that both teachers and students can take advantage of this technology and use it to their benefit.”

Pupils will be able to create their own profiles and access the website in school and at home.

“Schools have control over what can be viewed by the wider internet community and pupils can only become online ‘friends’ with children at their school.”

John Devlin, head teacher at Our Lady of Victories, said: “We are concerned about cyber-bullying and we won’t let it happen. Children know it won’t be tolerated at all.”