WOODBOROUGH Primary near Pewsey is celebrating victory in the One Million Minutes reading challenge run by leading education charity Achievement for All.

Their win will be rewarded with a brand new reading corner worth over £1,000, plus books all courtesy of challenge sponsors Peters Books and Furniture.

Over 2,000 children from primary schools across Wiltshire took part in the week long contest to see who could read for the most amount of time.

All the pupils from the primary school all got involved in the challenge and together notched up 51,664 minutes of reading. The school’s winning class was Lime Class who read for a total of 9,349 minutes.

Headteacher Sarah Brewis said: “We’ve had children reading everywhere this week, and I mean everywhere, they have loved this challenge. Our children love reading but they particularly enjoyed the competitive element of One Million Minutes.

“The prize couldn’t come at a better time for the school as we are about to undertake a refurbishment of our library. The new reading corner will be the centrepiece.”

The school dominated the leader board for most of the week spurred on by a surprise visit from best-selling children’s author Andy Robb, the creator of the Geekhood series.

“I think the Million Minutes reading challenge was a really good idea. When we found out we had won we were ecstatic,” said Year 5 pupil Zoe.

One Million Minutes is a national challenge rolling out region by region throughout the year.

CEO of Achievement for All Professor Sonia Blandford said: “Just ten minutes of reading a day can make such a difference to a child, that’s really the minimum we as parents should be striving for. But we hope this challenge is going to see children doing far more than that.

"We hope all primary schools will sign their children up to the challenge, and celebrate literacy and a love of reading by making One Million Minutes part of the school day.”