A new survey shows two-thirds of teachers feel they don't have the training to deal with cyber-bullying and internet security.
But a Wanganui high school principal says school education on cyber safety is wasted if parents don't keep it up at home.
An annual global survey of teachers' and students' internet use released last week found parents expected teachers to educate their kids about internet safety.
But the amount of time spent covering online safety in class didn't match up with parents' expectations, despite more than nine out of 10 teachers saying they used the internet during lessons.
The AVG Technologies survey also found nearly a third of teachers felt ill-equipped to deal with cyber bullying, and only 18 per cent had received formal training to teach online safety.
More than three quarters believed their pupils' parents relied too heavily on schools to prepare kids for the online world, and one in three felt parents didn't know enough about cyber-bullying.
Rangitikei College Karene Biggs said students were already taught internet safety, but parents needed to do their part at home.
"Children are rather naive about cyber safety and when we talk to kids, they don't really understand the footprint that they're creating when they go on to Facebook so we felt obliged to incorporate into our curriculum, which is already quite crowded."
The course had had good results with pupils, but this could be "undone" if the work wasn't carried on at home, where parents had a responsibility to teach their own children about cyber safety.
"We can teach it at school but if parents don't follow it up at home and limit the time kids are on the internet then anything we do at school will be a waste of time."
Being their children's Facebook friends was a good way for parents to stay across what was being said in the cyber sphere.
"They don't have to comment, but there needs to be a presence there."
According to the survey, 77 per cent of teachers thought internet safety should be a dedicated part of the curriculum.
After cyber bullying, the next biggest issue teachers had was students coming to them about viewing inappropriate content online.
NetSafe executive director Martin Cocker said there was room for increased training and resources for teachers in terms of dealing with cyber incidents, and cyber-bullying.