THE Manor Primary School was among the places attacked by graffiti vandals who spray painted offensive words around Melksham last week.

Police received several reports on Friday from residents in Milton Avenue and Ruskin Avenue to say they had woken to find cars, signs and fences spray painted in black.

Five youths were captured on CCTV at The Manor where they had spent less than two minutes vandalising the primary school’s signs and fence before making their way across the road to Brookside care home and spraying its sign and window.

Worried that youngsters making their way to school would read the offensive words headteacher Kerry Haines and her staff swiftly erased the signs.

Parents are now rallying around to help raise money so cleaning costs and new signs do not come out the school’s budget.

Miss Haines said: “I put it on Facebook to our parents and they’ve set up a campaign and want to do a non-school uniform day. They want to raise the money themselves to replace the signs, so it doesn’t affect the children.

“It’s mindless vandalism there is no need and we’ve got children coming into school and they shouldn’t be being exposed to inappropriate language. They had gone along Ruskin Avenue from Milton Avenue and they’ve spray painted the gate going into the field. They spray painted our Manor School sign and the Sunflowers sign.

“Luckily we saw it as we drove into school at 7.30am, so we got the caretaker to remove it straight away.”

The cricket pavilion at King George V playing field was also sprayed and Sunflowers Pre-school based at The Manor was also targeted on a different evening, when some of their play equipment was set alight in their forest area outside.

Miss Haines is liaising with officers. She added: “We feel really proud of our school and we have a really nice school with nice grounds, we try to make our school as nice as possible and its mindless vandalism and they have just spray painted for no reason.”

Sgt James Williams of Melksham Neighbourhood Policing Team, said: “We are conducting extensive enquiries to identify any possible suspects. In addition we have contacted our partner agencies to ask that they clean the graffiti up as soon as possible.”

Anyone with information should call 101.