A FURIOUS parent has blasted a Halesowen school for "lying" to children about having to make up the time they missed due to a snow day.

Letters were given to year five pupils at Lutley Primary School on Monday, explaining that learning time missed when the school was closed on March 2, had to be repaid.

The letter, which was addressed to headteacher Rebecca Cox, purported to be from the Department for Education and featured its logo on the header.

It read: "Children cannot afford to lose any vital learning time. Therefore, to suit your school, we would like you to inform us of which of the following options you would like to choose to repay the time to pupils, and to ensure your staff work their full allocation of hours."

Youngsters were asked to look at the options - which were to come into school for two consecutive Saturdays, a full weekend or staying for two hours after 3.30pm for three consecutive days - and discuss which they would prefer.

The letter, which later transpired to be "a joke" that the school had orchestrated in order to encourage debate amongst the youngsters, concluded by saying that if the school failed to respond, it would "result in disciplinary action taken against the senior leadership team at the school".

An outraged parent, who did not wish to be named, told the News that many children had been upset by the exercise, adding: "Some were in tears."

She continued: "It created quite a storm on social media too, with parents saying how ridiculous it was. People were quite irate about it.

"The next day we found out it was a joke, well, a fake letter, to try and get the children to debate the issue.

"There had been no prior warning to parents. They could have at least sent a letter to parent to say we want them to debate the issue, would you mind playing along, but I still don't see how lying to children can ever be the right thing to do."

The mum said that it was "an emotive issue" as many people, including herself, had struggled to get to work in the snow and find childcare, adding that it was "just another thing to worry about and try to sort out".

Following the backlash, an apologetic letter was sent out to parents by Mrs Cox on Tuesday, saying that children had been made aware that the letter "was not real".

It explained: "So that the children had a good debate about ‘paying back their snow day’ we made it appear as if they needed to consider the options in the letter and decide which one would be their preferred choice and we would report back to the sender of the letter.

"I apologise if the children thought this was something they had to consider for real it was only our intention to stimulate discussion about something the children would feel passionate about."