IT'S hardly surprising that internet plagiarism is rife in our schools.

More than half of teachers believe it is a serious problem among sixth-form students, a teaching union survey suggests today.

The 58% of 278 teachers who identified it as a problem said they thought 25% of work returned by pupils included material copied from internet sites.

One teacher said a piece of work they marked even contained website adverts.

Perhaps more worrying is that 55% said either their school did not have a policy to deal with plagiarism or they were unaware of one.

We have every sympathy with the teachers.

Identifying plagiarism is time-consuming and an unnecessary waste of their time.

With the technology so readily available to youngsters these days it's no surprise that some will take the easy route and just cut and paste items from the web.

But we mustn't forget that the internet is also a wonderful learning tool.

It has brought every piece of information a pupil may need straight to their fingertips.

Schools will have to introduce robust policies to tackle this 21st Century problem and that will mean their resources will be stretched even further.

And the only way of achieving this will be with extra funding from government.

There doesn't appear to be any other way to ensure honest students get the full credit for their hard work.