EDUCATION chiefs yesterday stressed their commitment to stop racism in Darlington schools.

The pledge came as a report showed that in the school year to mid-July there were 32 alleged racist incidents reported to Darlington Borough Council's education department.

Twenty-six cases involved name-calling, but there were also reports of racially-motivated assaults and derogatory comments about multi-faith areas of the curriculum.

Education officials say an initiative launched by the council last year will resolve the problem.

A spokesman for the council said yesterday: "Racism in schools is something that we take very seriously and we are determined to work with schools to stamp it out.

"We have had a positive response from schools since we introduced our policy giving guidelines on how to deal with racism last year, and these figures show that we will continue to encourage pupils to report all incidents and that we will punish perpetrators."

Actions taken to deal with incidents have included discussions with victims and perpetrators; counselling for the victim; meetings with parents of racial abusers and informing the police.

In a report to the council's cabinet, education director Geoffrey Pennington said: "Incidents during the lunch break - 15 - far outnumbered other times during the day. There were 33 male and nine female perpetrators, but the victims were equally distributed between male and female."

He added: "It is anticipated that as awareness extends and schools continue to challenge racism, the reported incidents will continue to rise."

Councillors will consider the matter at a cabinet meeting on Tuesday.

Ensuring that racist incidents in schools were recorded was a key recommendation of the MacPherson Report, after the murder of black teenager Stephen Lawrence.