A SECOND teenage girl who caused £500,000 of damage when she set fire to a Hampshire school has avoided a jail sentence.

The 14-year-old, along with her 13-year-old accomplice, started fires in Fareham’s Henry Cort Community School’s toilets and design and technology block.

All 630 pupils at the school had to be evacuated when fire alarms were triggered by the blazes, Portsmouth Crown Court heard.

Daily Echo: Click below to see a video of today's headlines in sixty seconds

The flames damaged the toilets and completely destroyed a design and technology classroom. The total value of the damage was £519,000.

The two girls were skipping lessons and had drunk a bottle of wine before sneaking into the toilets and setting fire to toilet paper with a cigarette lighter.

Prosecutor Timothy Moores told the court the pair then went into the empty classroom and set fire to aprons.

It took firefighters more than 30 minutes to bring the flames under control during the blaze last June.

The 14-year-old pleaded guilty to two counts of arson and was sentenced to a 12-month supervision order.

Sentencing Judge Richard Price told her: “If you break the order, you will come back in front of me and I will lock you up. You do not truant – you go to school or else you and I will meet again.”

An application was made to lift the court order banning the identification of the teenager, but the judge refused the application on the grounds it would negate the aims of the supervision order, which is designed to ensure she goes to school and fosters appropriate friendships.

The 13-year-old co-defendant was also handed a 12-month supervision order when the same Judge sentenced her in January.

The fire-damaged classrooms were replaced in November when a smart new technology block with state-of-the-art equipment opened at the school.