NEWS
DAVID GANDY LAUNCHES SCHOOL READING CAMPAIGN
Supermodel and entrepreneur David Gandy is encouraging primary schools in Kent to take part in the country’ s biggest one-week reading competition in a bid to help improve children’ s literacy levels across the country.
Ten Million Minutes, run by education charity Achievement for All, aims to get children reading at every primary school in England during the challenge which takes place from 9th – 15th March 2017.
David Gandy is encouraging Kent schools to challenge their pupils to read for as many minutes as they can in one week. The school which reads for the highest number of minutes by the end of the week has the chance to win a brand new library or reading area for their school worth £ 10,000, courtesy of Peters.
David, who is ambassador for the charity, is a firm believer in the importance of reading to a child’ s progress. He said:“ Reading is so important in everyday life – it’ s a vital skill to have yet many children struggle. The Ten Million Minutes campaign is designed to make reading fun for everyone and I would personally like to encourage every single primary school in Kent to take part.”
The campaign is also being backed by an abundance of prolific authors including Anthony Horowitz, Anne Fine, Jonathan Meres, Ian Douglas and Claire Freedman.
Primary schools can register for the challenge on the Achievement for All website
( http:// afaeducation. org) where they can login daily during the challenge to enter the number of minutes read by their school. A live online leaderboard will calculate their position, so they can race other schools to get to the top. To ensure the competition is fair for schools of all sizes, the leaderboard will be decided on the average number of minutes read per child.
Along with the main prize, there are some fabulous runner-up prizes: Three £ 250 vouchers to spend on primary resources with Oxford University Press, five bundles of notebooks and filing products from Nuco International Ltd, and 20 fun sticker packs courtesy of The Sticker Factory.
NEW ROMNEY ARTIST THROUGH TO THE SEMI-FINAL OF SKY ARTS PORTRAIT ARTIST OF THE YEAR
Kent artist Phoebe Cripps has won a place in the semi-final of Sky Arts’ Portrait Artist of the Year( PAOTY). Phoebe, who lives in New Romney, painted the portrait of television personality Sue Perkins, and it was Phoebe’ s portrait that Sue chose to take home at the end of the show.
Phoebe, who’ s husband Grant is also an artist and competed in Sky Arts Landscape Artist of the Year in 2015, went to Cottesmore school in West Sussex as a young child where she had also exhibited her work. She attended senior school in Benenden and now lives and works with Grant in New Romney.
You can watch Phoebe in action on Sky Arts On Demand, while the semi-final will air on 7th March at 8pm on Sky Arts.
Hundreds of entries were received for the 2017 competition, giving the judges the difficult task of whittling them down to just 54 artists. The winner of Portrait Artist the Year 2016 is awarded a £ 10,000 commission and £ 500 to spend on art materials at Cass Art.
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