Parents have backed a school's decision to expel a 13-year-old girl and her 15-year-old boyfriend after they were caught having sex in a boarding house.

The headteacher kicked out the pair from the £12,000-a-year Bloxham School, near Banbury, following their rendezvous in a television room.

Though they narrowly missed getting caught by a tutor, rumours of their illicit sex session swept through the school and the pair were forced to confess.

The scandal erupted only weeks after the school went fully co-educational. Before the start of the academic year girls had only been admitted to the sixth form.

Parents have backed the school's action. The mother of one boy at the school said: "The feeling is that it's going very well and they are all being very sensible. "There are rigid rules for behaviour, which is only right and proper, but you can't run a school like a prison."

The school had tried to quell worries over the arrival of girls, when it decided to go fully co-educational by sending out information packs entitled Girls at Bloxham.

Under the heading 'How will the girls integrate with the boys?' parents were told: "We confidently expect there will be no problem in encouraging boys to visit Raymond House'."

In a letter to parents, the school's headteacher David Exham said that most pupils were responding sensibly to the change. He said: "Co-education has started very well and the majority of our pupils are responding to the new set-up with good sense and enth- usiasm.

"I am obviously very distressed that it has been necessary to deal with the two of them as I did. I would not have had it happen, of course, but the school has now a clear reminder of the standards that we insist upon, and will have learned from this sad incident."

Girls have been attending the sixth form of Bloxham School since 1973. But they were not allowed to become boarders until 1978. Even then there were no girls' dormitories and female pupils had to stay with 'guardians' in the village.

When the first female boarders arrived a school rule declared that girls had to be escorted back to their guardian's homes by at least two sixth form boys.

The private school was founded in 1860 and given to the Woodward Foundation, an organisation to promote Christian values in 1896. Its new technology centre was opened last year by wacky TV scientist Heinz Wolff, of Great Egg race fame.

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