Schools ban pupils from using gossip website

By Richard Garner , Education Editor

Friday 24 December 2010

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Several leading independent schools are trying to block a "pernicious" website which they say encourages pupils to bully each other by posting anonymous gossip.

At least three schools have written to parents urging them to tell their children not to use the LittleGossip website because of "unpleasant" comments made about pupils.

In one case, a named girl pupil was said to be "working her way through the boys but unfortunately hasn't made any girl friends along the way, what will she do when she runs out of boys?"

Another girl was "rumoured to have bedded at least 45 guys... legend/slut?" A student at Eton wrote about a fellow pupil who "spent all of dad's cash on a drug addiction".

The heads of Alleyn's School and James Allen's Girls' School in Dulwich, south London, have banned pupils from using the site. Emanuel School in nearby Battersea has urged parents to educate their children about its dangers and not regard it as "harmless fun".

Mark Hanley-Browne, the head teacher at Emanuel, called the site "pernicious" and said comments on it were "very unpleasant". Marion Gibbs, the head of James Allen's Girls' School, added: "I'm angry this vehicle for cyber-bullying exists."

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