PUPILS at Lancaster's Royal Grammar School will be indulging in a bit of surfing during the fine weather. The famous old Lancaster school has become one of the first in the country to link up to the information superhighway via radio waves, allowing pupils to surf the Internet. And it's all thanks to a new scheme devised at Lancaster University which is soon to be available at all schools in the Lancaster and Morecambe area.

As part of the university's EDNET project, a special radio link has been set up between computers at the Quernmore Road school and the Bailrigg campus.

That link is almost one hundred times faster than the conventional telephone line links and operates at a fraction of the cost, making the use of the Internet feasible at cash-strapped schools.

Dr John Bentham, second master at the grammar school, said: "This is a lot faster and a lot cheaper than any other method. Without using this we probably couldn't afford to put a lot of pupils on line at the same time.

"This system enables us to take a whole class into a computer room and have all the boys hooked up to the same thing at the same time. It will really start to come into its own next term."

The Royal Grammar School already has 20 computers using this high performance Internet connection, being used every day to print out the front page of foreign newspapers.

In next term's language lessons, pupils will be able to view news from around the world as well as communicating with fellow pupils in schools across the globe.

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