We held a special assembly this week to announce the winners of our Year 7 and 8 500 word short story competition. The four judges – Mr Instone, Mr Allen, Mrs Jackson and Miss Anders – all had a wonderful time reading through the 27 stories and assured me that they had a difficult time choosing the 3 winners.

After much debate, the judges narrowed their favourite stories down to 6, and then from this to the final 3. As all of the stories were typed and given to the judges anonymously, no one knew who the winners were until the assembly when each story was read aloud and each writer was asked to ‘reveal themselves’ one at a time. This certainly added to the excitement of the occasion and created a wave of frantic whispering as everyone asked “who’s it is?” as each story was read aloud.

I would like to say a big thank you to the judges for their time and enthusiasm, and in particular to all of our pupils who worked very hard on their writing, and who I hope will be inspired to carry on writing many more short stories in the future.

Claire Park

Head of English, Curriculum and Enrichment

You can read their stories by clicking on the links below.

Runners Up:

5. “The One Who Got Away” by Caroline Radford

13. “Falling” by Luca Park

21. “NewLife” by Simon Wagner

Winners:

23. “LifeMoths” by Toby Richardson

10. “Taken” by Islay Northend

24. “But It Didn’t Come Back” by Tomas Richardson