Parents of teenagers who attend a Hampshire secondary school were shocked to find links to hardcore porn and online casinos on the school’s website.

The site was been temporarily shut down last month after parents were confronted with links which offered information on how to buy the impotence drug Viagra.

The links were discovered on the parents' forum pages for Sandown High School on the Isle of Wight.

They included web pages featuring indecent images of Britney Spears and links to online casinos.

The school said it appeared "the links were added through internet spam" and pupils and parents were not to blame. Cath Scallon, deputy head teacher of Sandown High School, said: "It was the parents' forum which was affected.

"We did discuss whether to have it password-protected but we decided to leave it open so prospective parents could look at it.

"It's a shame because it was a positive thing with lots of interesting threads such as about school instruments and the school uniform.

"But it appears that these links were added through internet spam and if you do not check a site every 10 seconds this is what can happen.

"We have taken it off for the moment because we do not want people to think these are the sorts of things we condone."

The incident highlights once again the potential pitfalls faced when setting up websites.

Many sites, usually offering adult content, are directed directly to the new sites unless some sort of spam protection is uploaded.

Sandown High School’s website is currently undergoing a major redesign to ensure it does not fall victim to unscrupulous websites again and staff at the school have vowed to continue with the website rather than scrap it all together.