A CLASS of five-year-olds wrote to Home Secretary David Blunkett and told him: "Save our school from the vandals."

And yesterday Hyndburn Labour MP Greg Pope turned up at St John's CE Primary School in Great Harwood to see the destruction for himself.

He told the Year One pupils in the playground: "We will try to make your school better."

Every child in teacher Julie Green's class wrote to the Home Secretary after teenage yobs had partied on their school roof, drinking, sniffing glue and hurling bottles down to the playground below.

Mrs Green said: "We have to clear up the playing fields and playground first thing every morning.

"We are finding syringes, needles and broken bottles everywhere. It's appalling and dangerous to the children."

Fences have been smashed, and in a copse next to the school youngsters have set up a drinks and drugs den, she added. Recently, staff even found human faeces smeared on classroom windows.

Headteacher David Ratcliffe said: "This is an over-subscribed and successful school and this used to be a decent area where people have lived for many years.

"But house prices are so low now that unscrupulous landlords are moving in.

"There's a house which we know is full of drug addicts."

Mrs Green added that when one female school helper went to remonstrate with vandalising youngsters she was physically threatened.

Mr Pope said: "This isn't really a schools problem, it's a problem of society today and is happening right across Hyndburn."

The low cost of housing, family breakdown and joblessness in the area were among the problems.

He pledged to meet police chiefs next week to address the issue.

"We need to work out a strategy on how to deal with this whole problem," he said.

A police spokesman said they had had three calls to the school in the last month, and were investigating.