Local pupils have been left heartbroken after heartless vandals targeted their outdoor classroom, causing huge amounts of damage.

Pupils and staff at Llantilio Pertholey School arrived on Friday (July, 14) morning to discover that their outdoor learning area had fallen foul of vandals overnight

Headteacher, Helen King said: “When we discovered the carnage on Friday that these youths had left, we were devastated.

“The staff have worked so hard to create attractive and motivating outdoor learning spaces where our children are able to learn independently, with any equipment and resources they might need easily to hand.

“My staff and I had spent a lot of time, money and effort developing the areas and making resources.

“The children loved this way of learning and were able to be creative and present their work."

Paint was thrown, pupils’ work was damaged, equipment was broken, things were upturned, resources were strewn everywhere and items were also thrown on the roof.

A member of staff described the scene as “a terrible mess” and “worse than the photographs captured.”

Helen continued: “When we discovered the carnage on Friday that these youths had left, we were devastated.

“The staff have worked so hard to create attractive and motivating outdoor learning spaces where our children are able to learn independently, with any equipment and resources they might need easily to hand.

“My staff and I had spent a lot of time, money and effort developing the areas and making resources.

“The children loved this way of learning and were able to be creative and present their work how they wanted.

“They really have taken extra pride in their ‘Discovery’ learning. Staff and children were very upset and cross that someone had chosen to spoil their school, their space that they loved. This is not something that we expected at our school.

“However, I was heartened by the number of our pupils who offered to help to clean up the mess.

“We have been inundated with messages of support, not only from our school community, but from the wider community. This horrible event has brought the whole community together.

"People have offered their time, their skills and resources to help us to repair the damage. Our amazing PTFA have organised a bake sale for Thursday to raise funds and to give people the opportunity to support us.

"We are very overwhelmed and very grateful. We are determined not to let these mindless vandals change our school or the way our children learn. We have added secure fencing to prevent intruders again.

"We are having to invest in updating our CCTV system. Sadly, this means less money to spend on resources for the children but we have no choice. We are now spending time recreating the learning space to make it even better than it was before! We are determined to change this upsetting time into a positive.”