A TEENAGER who sparked panic when he was seen with a knife heading towards King Solomon High in Barkingside is a pupil at a unit for excluded children next door to the school, the Guardian can reveal.

On Monday hundreds of pupils and staff at King Solomon High, on Forest Road, were told to evacuate classrooms and stay in their main dining hall by police after reports of a "dangerous individual" on the loose.

A 15-year-old was arrested and charged with possesing two knives on Barkingside High Street soon afterwards, away from the school.

Yesterday he appeared at Redbridge Magistrates Court and received a six month referral order to report to a Youth Offending team for possessing a bladed article.

And now it has emerged that the teen is a pupil at Starch House Referral Unit, which is just metres from King Solomon High.

The unit, which opened in 2007, provides education for children and teenagers excluded from other schools in Redbridge, or who are persistent non-attenders.

Some pregnant school girls also attend the centre.

Around 50 youngsters aged between five and 16 are thought to be pupils there.

However a spokeswoman for Redbridge Council said that while the teen arrested by police is a pupil at the unit, he is currently on a fixed term exclusion, so was not attending Starch House at the time.

It is believed he travelled from another location towards the direction of King Solomon and the referral unit, which sparked the initial panic.

Police have said their investigations "strongly suggest" the youngster was not intending to go to King Solomon, but instead to "an unrelated property nearby."

After the arrest on Monday, pupils at King Solomon returned to their lessons at 2.30pm after being held for one hour, and went home as normal at the end of the school day.

It is not believed that any "dangerous individual" entered the school grounds at any time.

Soon after the incident on Monday, some initially tried to link the incident at the Jewish faith school with "Islamic terror", but police and school staff said the claims were "totally untrue".

Students and teachers at King Solomon were told "within minutes" of being evacuated to their dining hall that the lock-down had nothing to do with events in the Middle East, and parents were also contacted soon after with the same information.

One parent of a year seven pupil told the Guardian: "I received an email from the school saying there had been an incident but that it had nothing to do with the international situation in the Middle East.

"I think when the children were in the dining hall they all started texting their parents and that’s where there might have been some hysteria."

Headteacher Spencer Lewis praised the efforts of police, who he said acted with a "better safe than sorry" approach.