The Government’s adviser on technology in schools has admitted that a multi-million pound scheme to provide free laptops to pupils could be at risk from parents selling on the computers.

More than half a million children will be eligible for a free laptop under the Government funded scheme announced today to enable pupils from poor backgrounds to access the internet from home.

A third (35 per cent) of families have no Internet access making online research for homework an impossibility.

The £300 million Home Access scheme gives families a £600 package including a laptop, internet connection for a year and technical support.

But Niel McLean, executive director of Home Access at Becta, the Government’s adviser on IT in schools, accepted that some parents may be tempted to exchange the free computers for cash on the black market. “It’s a risk but we don’t live in a police state and people simply aren’t allowed to go around and look in people’s homes.”

The Government is reliant on teacher monitoring of pupils to make sure they are using the Internet at home and says it will scan online auction sites, to see whether the computers are being sold.

Mr McLean insisted that the laptops would not be worth much on the black market and hoped to disincentivise people from selling them to raise cash. “They would be guilty of fraud,” he said.

Parents must sign an agreement that the laptops, which come with child safety software, are only used for educational purposes.

Early indications show the take-up rate of the scheme has far exceeded expectations and is likely to rise further as more families suffer redundancies and increasing numbers of children become eligible for the laptops.

“Access to free technology has made some parents who have been invisible to schools before, visible,” Mr McLean said.

“It’s much more attractive to go to a meeting about a free Government IT scheme than to go to a parents’ evening to tell you your daughter - who you know is not very good at maths - is not very good at maths.”

Under the programme, which is being piloted in Oldham and Suffolk and rolled out nationally later this year, families will be limited to two computers per household if they have more than one child.

If demand exceeds supply the computer package will be available on a first come first served basis and Becta, who overseas IT provision in schools, will apply for extra Government funding when the scheme is reviewed in three years’ time.

Jim Knight, the Schools Minister, said IT was now a vital part of children’s lives. “As previous generations may look back fondly on inkwells and fountain pens, today’s children see laptops and memory sticks as their everyday materials for school,” he said.

The Department for Schools aims to make sure all children have Internet in their homes by 2011.

A similar scheme in Birmingham in which a charity has given out 1,800 laptops in collaboration with a local councillor has no monitoring of lost, broken or stolen computers.

In the year since the scheme run by the Birmingham e-learning Foundation began, a handful of computers have been mislaid so far and there is no way of tracking what has become of them.

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