Staff were forced to call the cops after a group of teens laid siege to the Maidenbower school and staged a sit-down protest.

Worried staff had cancelled timetabled lessons on Friday – the last day of school – because of fears about bad behaviour.

But the plan backfired when students started protesting in the building in Maidenbower Lane.

A spokesman for Crawley Police confirmed they had been called to deal with a disturbance when a number of youths had 'steamed' into the school grounds on Friday.

He said: "There was a group of teenagers gathered that stormed the school grounds. We sent down a couple of officers to have a look and move them on. One bottle of alcohol was confiscated."

Bosses at Oriel High School would not confirm whether school staff called police and are refusing to give details about the incident.
Headteacher Gillian Smith did release a statement.

She said: "During Friday morning a number of the Year 11 students set out to come on to the site as a group.

"The behaviour of some of these students was not acceptable, and we will be following up issues with their parents and carers."

Meanwhile other kids at the school said they were fuming that teachers had axed their last day – and organised an event on Maidenbower Fields instead.

Disappointed Year 11 schoolgirl Rebecca Fisher, 16, said: "It was all really stressful saying goodbye to mates when it was just sprung on us in assembly like that – lots of girls were crying. I'm finding getting ready for my exams even harder now."

Rebecca added: "It's caused a lot of stress for everybody because we weren't prepared for our final day.

"We missed out on a whole day of school right before our exams as well and we didn't get a proper final farewell either."

Fun-loving Oriel pupils organised their own leaving celebration via internet instant messaging service MSN and dozens of kids turned up to party.

Rebecca added: "We all got on MSN last night and loads of us are going to meet on Maidenbower fields.

"It's a shame that we couldn't do it at school, now we won't be revising either because they changed the plans at the last minute."



Full story in this week's Observer

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Reader's emailed comments:

Tina Cassidy: Your story skirts around the truth as does not give the complete picture - what you need to have identified is the way in which Ms Smith cancelled their last day - that is much more relevant..
We as parents were only aware that their last day was cancelled when we received a letter sent home that evening.
Of course these kids were going to react in some way, you cannot take away a historic day of their lives and not expect some some of response.
The school handled the whole thing very badly from the unpopular decision through to the handling of events on Friday - they have created and compounded a problem.
For a school that encourages student/teacher relationships, any respect or credibility that may have been built over the past years has now been lost.
They are a really excellent bunch of kids, and the school should recognise that and be giving them lots of support as they go into their GSCE exams - not demoralising them.

Lisa Dando: Re. your article about school in Crawley cancelling pupils last day celebrations: the same thing has happened at a secondary school in Lewes, east Sussex. Priory School announced to pupils yesterday in assembly that their final day, today was cancelled as a result of a small amount of pupils displaying bad behaviour. As you can imagine pupils and parents are extremely upset about this.