A 6 year old from St Mary’s Primary, Newton Aycliffe has been named a regional winner in the National Young Writers’ Award! Samuel Imran’s story, called ‘My Hero is my Mum’ was a story based on this year’s theme ‘heroes’.

The competition, which has been running for the past three months, invited children from across the UK to write a 500-word story about ‘heroes’ – whether that’s their parents, a policeman or their idol!

Organised by tuition provider Explore Learning, the competition is now in its tenth year and this year’s judge was world renowned best-selling children’s author David Walliams! A record breaking 39,000 children from all over the UK entered in an effort to win a trip to Disneyland Paris and £500 worth of books for their school!

Huge congratulations to Samuel Imran. He has been selected as one of our top 150 entries. This is a massive achievement as we had over 38,000 entries. Well done from everyone!

The next stage is to whittle it down further to a top 10, which are the ones that get sent to David Walliams. If he makes it through the next stage. This will be in the next few weeks.

From Samuel’s Dad….

“We have been very lucky that Samuel has been helped and encouraged with his reading and writing at St Mary’s – to the point that he is enjoying to read a lot now and has started to do his own diary.

It’s heartwarming to see how he has been nurtured to express himself and encouraged to use his imagination to explore the world, thanks in no small measures to Mrs Bennett and Ms Foster in Year 1.

We have enjoyed watching Samuel getting more confident in reading and expressing his thoughts. It will also be wonderful if he is able to inspire his school friends and make the school proud – we definitely are!”

Imran