Social networking site for schools

Schools will give out passwords for children to use on Kwercus

Plans have been unveiled for a new social networking site aimed at schools.

Kwercus will be a secure system, based on the internet, but managed by teachers.

The company behind it hopes the site will be used as a learning resource for pupils, parents, and staff, as well as somewhere for young people to have fun.

Kwercus is due to launch in 2010.

It already has the backing of the government's internet safety advisor, Dr Tanya Byron.

Newsbeat spoke to its boss, Anthony Lilley.

How is Kwercus going to work?

It is delivered across the internet, but the whole thing is managed and controlled at a school level.

The crucial thing is that the school is the only place you can verify that a child is actually the child you think they are. So the school has to give out the passwords and be in control of all the information.

It's that classic thing we see all the time. Lots of companies don't bother having email systems. They just use Google or they just use Hotmail. We are bringing that to a schools base.

So no chance of adults or people under false names having a used ID on the site?

You can never say no, in the same way you can never say it's impossible for a school caretaker to be Ian Huntley.

What you are absolutely doing is putting the power and the control with the teachers - the people who know those children, who have that relationship.

Then what goes on on that network is recorded and trackable.

Who are the watchdogs? Who are the guardians on this and how much access do they have?

It is all at the school level. It is essentially the same as it would be in real life but we do have these interesting questions from the children we are dealing with. Are you going to read all my email? Well no, we're not going to read all your email. But if the email flags or the instant messenger flags that you are calling somebody a rude word then we will know.

What we are trying to do is get a balance between that kind of enforcement and basically people knowing that there are boundaries and rules about how you operate on these social networks as there are in school and that there are implications if you go across those boundaries.

Why would a school or hard-pressed teacher want to spend their time administering a social networking site?

I think we have got coming the first generation of social networking parents. 80% of the mums in our survey that we did for Kwercus are on social networks of these kids. So, in fact, it is one of the ways they deal with information in their lives. So if you weren't dealing with that, it would be like refusing to phone then when the phone was new.

So we're trying to go with the grain of it. We are trying to provide access to content and access to other resources as well.

Why would kids want to be on Kwercus? Why would they not want to be in the cool places where everyone can go?

I don't think it is an 'either/or'. You go to a school disco but you know it isn't going to be the same as going to a professional gig but you know it is fun in its own way.

One of the big things we want to help with is children knowing how to social network better when they do move on to the wide open public social networks.

You are not trying to replace their Facebook activity because children and teenagers are different people when they are outside school.