TEACHERS hovered in trilby hats and oversized coats while their whispers largely suggested that the head of a Lowestoft school had mysteriously disappeared.

TEACHERS hovered in trilby hats and oversized coats while their whispers largely suggested that the head of a Lowestoft school had mysteriously disappeared.

And as students at Benjamin Britten High School got to grips with news that Trevor Osborne had been kidnapped by secret agents for witnessing a crime, their mission, should they choose to accept it, was to find him.

As part of a curriculum project to develop learning and thinking skills, teams set out to unravel a series of clues and crack codes to find out his location.

They were given compasses to find how they close they were to the target, cryptic codes to translate within Sudoku puzzles and were instructed to email their evidence to Big Brother ready for a presentation on their findings.

During the day pupils were encouraged to develop their creative thinking, team work, independent enquiry and self management, amongst many other skills.

And after Mr Osborne was returned safe and well, albeit sporting an attractive orange boiler suit, they were asked to evaluate what they had learnt and how they can take this information into future lessons.

Louise Jackson, assistant headteacher said the project had been put together by a team of staff volunteers who believed it was important to focus on transferable skills.