THE internet has been used in the past by children to bully other children in schools. Now, thanks to ease of access to cyberspace, some pupils are now using websites to bully their teachers.

Various sites now allow unfettered access by children who are leaving anonymous, disparaging comments about their tutors where they can be seen by potentially millions of web users.

Children in Bolton and the surrounding areas have now begun to use these sites, prompting some schools to ban access to them during school time. But as most children have access to the web at home that does not solve the problem.

Teachers already have to put up with aggressive and unruly behaviour from many of their pupils forcing many to retire early through ill health or to leave the profession for other jobs.

Until some brave teacher, backed by their union, takes a website and the pupil author to court for defamation it seems it will be hard to stop this practice. Perhaps some children will have to find out the hard way that their thoughtless actions actually do have consequences.