A SCHOOL had to be evacuated after a nine-year-old girl took an artillery shell to show her classmates.

The youngster's primary class had been doing a project on the Second World War and she thought her contribution would help.

But when teachers saw the shell they alerted police and all 500 pupils at East Herrington Primary School, near Sunderland, were evacuated.

Headteacher Geoff Bolton said: "A member of staff who has an interest in these things saw the shell and thought it might still be live.

"I have spoken to the girl's parents about it and they have told me that it is not live.

"They were pretty sure about that as it has been an ornament at home, but we have to take these precautions.

"In the end, it has turned out to be a very good exercise in how to evacuate the school and how we all coped, which was very well."

It had been decided, at first, to evacuate only the junior school pupils shortly before 10am on Wednesday. But police ordered everyone out of the Balmoral Terrace school and contacted bomb disposal experts from Catterick, North Yorkshire.

Mr Bolton said: "The squad confirmed that it had been defused and even x-rayed it. It turned out not to be a Second World War shell, but from the First World War that was bought, in good faith, from the Belgian battlefields.

"I think, now, we will be sticking to the Tudors for history projects in the future."