West Yorkshire and Merseyside police forces are distributing laptop tracking technology to teachers and pupils.

The Security Guardian devices, from tracking supplier ExactTrak, have been developed in consultation with several police forces.

The device is hosted in a standard PC card and can track a device in real-time to the nearest 15cm. Its inbuilt power source means laptops can be tracked even if they are not turned on.

The GPS tracking component inside the device will be remotely activated when a theft is reported, and will use the GSM network to report its position via the monitoring centre at regular intervals.

Unathorised attempts to remove the card will disable the laptop until the card is replaced or password protected enabling software is used.