A HEADMASTER has demanded a get-tough policy against vandals after raiders again targeted his school and caused more than £2,000 damage.

More than 150 windows were smashed in an Easter Day orgy of destruction at Rosehill Junior School, Burnley.

It was the worst single incident at the Moorland Road site which has been plagued by damage, assaults, burglaries and drug-users.

Today, as staff cleaned up the latest damage, head Mr Bob Pilborough declared: "It is time the accent shifted from being soft with people who do wrong.

"Unfortunately, there are all sorts of people who would protest if we protected the school more severely."

Mr Pilborough called on police to make the 300-pupil school a top priority patrol area and he slammed parents who allowed their children to commit damage.

"Why don't the parents of these young people involved know where they are and what they are doing and do they care?

"Some have even offered alibis after we have received information pinpointing the offenders."

Mr Pilborough, whose school has bid for £10,500 Challenge Funding for security cameras to be placed around the site, also questioned the attitude of the community in general.

"How can we have a situation in which 150 windows are broken yet no-one hears or sees anything?"

He added: "There are all sorts of questions to be asked of all sorts of people in the community."

Mr Pilborough said the cost of the damage swallowed up nearly half the school's annual repairs budget in the first week of the new financial year.

He added that this and the fact that the school was having to enter a "national lottery" for security cameras, further underlined the serious underfunding of schools.

The official CCTV-bid document for Burnley says the junior school has the second worst crime and incident history of all schools in the area.

It states: "Glue sniffing, under age drinking, criminal damage, obscene graffiti, human excrement and urine all create problems on the site."

The document says drug users have been arrested and, since 1994, police have recorded 60 assaults, robberies or burglaries, 56 autocrime offences, 69 other crimes and 650 incidents.

It adds that morale of teaching staff is constantly drained by the damage they find when they arrive at work.

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