Adelaide: A high school teacher in Australia asked her class to design a plan for a terrorist attack, that would kill as many innocent people as possible, but had no intention of promoting terrorism, education officials said on Wednesday.

The Year 10 students at Kalgoorlie-Boulder Community High School in Western Australia were given the assignment last week in a class on contemporary conflict and terrorism.

Principal Terry Martino said he withdrew the assignment as soon as he heard about it. But after news of it was published in Wednesday's West Australian newspaper, talk radio and online forums began a busy debate and some survivors of terror attacks across Australia, which has recently been a target of terror campaigns at home and abroad, came forward to express their outrage.

"It's extremely offensive if you've ever been involved in it," said Peter Hughes, who was extremely badly burnt in the 2002 Bali bombings, which killed 202 people, including 88 Australians, on the Indonesian resort island. "It's something they’d probably do in some radical school in Indonesia. For it to be done in the state education system is mind-blowing," he told the newspaper.

The students were asked to pretend they were terrorists making a political statement by releasing a chemical or biological agent on "an unsuspecting Australian community," according to a copy of the assignment received by the West Australia newspaper.

The task included choosing the best time to attack, explaining their choice of victim and what effects the attack would have on a human body.

"Your goal is to kill the most innocent civilians in order to get your message across," the assignment read.

Grades were to be allocated based on students' ability to analyse information they’d learned on terrorism and chemical and biological warfare, and apply it to a real-life scenario.

Sharyn O'Neill, Director-General of the state's Department of Education, said the class was meant to teach students about conflict and seeing other people's perspectives but that the teacher had made an insensitive, unprofessional mistake.

"The teacher, with every best intention, was attempting to have the students think through someone else's eyes about conflict," O'Neill told reporters in Perth. "I think there are better ways to do that. This is not what we expect of professional educators."

O'Neill said she had requested a full report on the incident, but believed the school had taken the correct action by immediately withdrawing the assignment and counselling the teacher about the inappropriate nature of her teaching.

The school declined to identify the teacher, citing her privacy, and her name also was not given in the newspaper report. She was in her mid-20s and had been teaching for three years, O'Neill said.” I think it was well-intentioned but she has made a mistake, and she's very remorseful for not thinking this task through," O'Neill said.