Of those which have replied, about 14% have challenged the names they have been given.

Part of the reason for the apparently poor take-up of the free registration is the very short time schools were given to respond to the offer letters, which were sent out just before the half-term holiday.

But it also reflects a confusion about the whole project. Schools are flooding their internet service providers' helplines with queries.

Some cannot get onto the internet for the first time because the registration process is stalled. The service providers have been thrown into chaos.

Names disputed

The scheme to regularise school domain names was devised by the government agency charged with overseeing school internet connectivity, the British Educational and Communications Technology Agency (Becta), which is working with the UK domain name registrar, Nominet.

Schools have been allocated names in the consistent format 'schoolname.area.sch.uk' in an effort to overcome the shambles of broken links that characterises current lists of schools' internet addresses.

They were told about this at the end of October and had only until 5 November, to accept the name or propose another.

A Nominet spokeswoman said that as of this Wednesday, 7,200 schools - about 28% - had responded. Of those, most were happy with the names proposed for them.

Just under 1,000 wanted something different. This had been anticipated, because many schools would say they already had a name by which they were known.

Nominet says that most of the alternatives are acceptable, but "a handful" have been referred back to Becta.

'They don't understand'

"We now have about 30 to 40 calls a day from confused schools," said Tim Clark, marketing manager with RM, the internet service provider (ISP) that has connected more schools in the UK than any other. It has some 9,000 schools on its Internet for Learning service.

"They are saying, 'Do we have to change our name?' They don't understand the implications. They don't understand what is going on.

"I'm actually very supportive of what they [Becta] are doing but it's the way they are doing it and the process they have followed."

The other big player in the school internet market, Edex, has put more than 3,000 schools on the net and is connecting new customers at the rate of about 120 a week - but the process has stalled because of the names issue.

Edex: Installations hit

"It's a real dog's dinner," said the educational director, Adrian Carey.

Even though it is the ISPs which provide the e-mail and web forwarding which actually make the domain names work, they have not been told by Nominet what the approved names are.

"We put in a local education authority order for 120 school names, and 70 came back with Nominet saying 'You can't use these' - but not why we couldn't," Mr Carey said.

His staff then had to go back to the schools to ask what domain name was in the letter they had received from Nominet, and re-submit them.

Mr Carey estimates it has cost Edex "tens of thousands of pounds".

'Inevitable'

Nominet says the ISPs had been put on notice about the timing of the changeover.

Its operations director, Lesley Cowley, accepted that ISPs were trying to register schools while being in the dark as to what their domain names were, but said it was an inevitable overlap of timing.

"We could have given an ISP the name that we had suggested to the school, and the school could be in the process of coming back with a different name, which they are entitled to do," she said.

Responses from schools were still coming in at the rate of "hundreds a day".

"We need all of them to respond," Ms Cowley said. "And we will get all of them at some stage, because we are following this up with a second mailing and then we will follow it up with telephone calls to schools."

Anomalies are turning up all the time in the names. For example, schools to the west of London regard the area as Middlesex and want to use that as the geographical part of their name, but have been told they cannot because it no longer exists as a local authority area.

Schools are banned from using initials in their name. Bexley-Erith Technical High School is always known as BETHS - but Becta/Nominet will not allow that.

This sort of ruling has resulted in some very long names - one has 46 characters.

"Who is going to type all that in?" Adrian Carey said, "and what are the chances of making a mistake doing so?"

"The principle behind the scheme is brilliant. It is just these practical considerations which Becta did not give enough weight to."

'Good system'

Becta's policy co-ordinator, Peter Avis, said it would defeat the object of the scheme to let schools be too choosy.

"We have told Nominet to make sure it is a coherent system," he said. "Schools cannot be known by initials which mean nothing to the outside world."

Nominet and Becta are not saying that all schools will eventually be forced to adopt the new names.

They are being given a grace period of at least two years during which they can also run their existing name, if they have one, although ISPs are likely to charge £50 or so for doing that.

The intention is that they will then switch to the new format, but there is no talk of coercion at this stage.

"The system is meant to be benign," Mr Avis said. "It's a good system."