THE head teacher of a school hit by arson on the weekend has spoken of his pride at the way pupils and staff have rallied to get back to normal.

The blaze was started in the early hours of Sunday morning, and took four fire crews several hours to get under control.

Cressex Community School was forced to shut for two days so that it could be made safe for its 872 schoolchildren to return.

Phil Mitchell, acting head of the school in Holmers Lane, Cressex, said on Thursday: "The children were able to return to school yesterday. It was really depressing that they missed two days of school but necessary - features of the site were dangerous as a result of the vandalism.

"But members of staff worked incredibly hard over those two days, with support from the fire service and the police."

He explained that the school was back to running normally now though, despite the problems the arson had created. He said: "Since children have returned, we've got back to normal incredibly quickly. Four classrooms are not available - two were completely destroyed - so members of staff have had to decant to other places. That has put a lot of extra pressure on children, but they seem to have coped very well."

Mr Mitchell added that he was not aware of any specific developments in the police investigation, but was confident no one at the school was involved in the attack. He said: "Police have some leads, but I don't know much. But so far they are not suspecting any children from this school."

He added that the atmosphere in school had been very positive, and said that whatever the motive of the arson was, it was the pupils who had suffered most.

He said: "It's very much that these vandals have attacked our school and our means' children more than any other single group."

The English department was completely wrecked by the fire, and a second blaze caused damage to a classroom on the Modern Languages department.

Fire crews were called out at around 2am, but believe it had been burning for around 45 minutes by the time they were alerted by neighbours. Both of the affected blocks stand apart from the main school building and other subject departments.

Dr Katy Simmons, chairman of governors at the school, said: "It's been a week of mixed feelings.

"We are saddened and angry at what has happened but we've always been determined we would do the best we could for the future of the children.

"If anything this has made us even more resilient."

Anyone with information on the incident can contact police on 0845 8505 505, or call Crimestoppers on 0800 555 11