Pupils at Mawnan Smith were among thousands that returned to superfast surfing speeds this term, as over 20 schools were connected to superfast broadband this summer.

Mawnan Smith, Threemilestone and St Mary’s Primary in Truro are just a few of the schools to be enabled with fibre broadband as part of the Superfast Cornwall programme, which aims to bring faster speeds to Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly.

Mawnan Smith Primary School head teacher, Randall Brook said: “Being a rural school presents it’s own problems, thankfully, now internet access isn’t one of them.

“Having 40 or 50 kids at a time all accessing web to research class topics takes up a lot of bandwidth and before we struggled.

“The new superfast broadband allows us to now tap into a whole world of exciting new resources without worrying about buffering and lessons grinding to a halt.”

While Superfast Cornwall has spent the school holidays rolling out high speed broadband to some schools in Cornwall, school IT provider ICT4 has been providing them with a new suite of productivity and security tools to ensure safer internet use.

Glyn Pascoe, Managing Director for iCT4 said: “This is the first time that many schools have been able to access the high speed connections and they are really embracing it.

“Obviously parents want to know that their children are safe whilst online.

“We are implementing enhanced security systems that offer greater flexibility with access to secure resources such as YouTube for Schools, which only offers educational and safe content.”