Pupils in a primary school in Marmande, near Bordeaux, reportedly accessed pornographic images during a history lesson this week.

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The class of nine and 10 year olds left school on Monday afternoon telling their parents they had seen something on the laptops, and did not know if “it was a good or a bad thing”.

One of the parents told local press a child in the history class, a handful of whom had laptops in front of them, had accidentally typed ‘xx’ instead of ‘www.’ and clicked through to porn sites.

His shouts and giggles attracted a group of kids around the computer, who managed to look at the images for a few minutes before a teacher intervened.

The school’s headteacher said he will write letters home to all parents and install a check on computers to prevent it happening again.

“We didn’t want to incriminate the school or the directors, we just wanted parental controls installed on the computers,” said one mother.

“My daughter was very shocked by the images she saw - this is very serious.”