PARENTS at a school are outraged and their kids are in tears after a school faked a UFO landing and alien abduction on school grounds to "excite" their imaginations.

Some of the seven to 11-year-olds were left in tears after a spaceship apparently crash-landed and a teacher was abducted by aliens.

To make it look realistic, the school obtained sirens and flashing lights from the police and littered the grounds with debris from the 'spaceship'.

Parents yesterday condemned the school for 'terrifying' their children and claimed that teachers had gone over the top in trying to 'fire their imagination'.

The 'Everyone Writes Day' - for all 370 pupils at the school in Burgess Hill, West Sussex - was designed to develop youngsters' writing skills.

It is based on an idea from the Department for Children, Schools and Families and the National Literacy Trust. The aim is to find ways to take writing beyond the classroom and to provide 'exciting stimuli' for storytelling.

At the start of the day, head Diana Goss informed pupils that an alien craft had crashed near the school and pupils were encouraged to 'follow a trail of debris' before stumbling across the UFO.

Sussex Police set up a crime scene around the crashed craft and supplied a police constable and a community support officer for two hours to help the children produce witness statements.

Pupils were told that Joy Law, the school's learning support teacher, who is responsible for special needs pupils, had been abducted.

Read more of this story here on the Daily Mail.

Originally published as Alien, UFO abduction makes kids cry