Credit:  Fran Bardsley – Oxford Mail

Edith Moorhouse School is one of five schools that could soon be celebrating winning £7,500 of Olympic-inspired improvements – with your help.

Maylarch have backed  Edith Moorhouse School in Carterton in submitting a bid and have been successfully selected as finalists in the School Olympic Save Our School competition.

For the second year the Oxford Mail has teamed up with Abingdon construction company Leadbitter to offer a £7,500 revamp to one lucky school.

Swimming changing rooms, adventure playgrounds and indoor and outdoor apparatus and climbing equipment are among the improvements that pupils and staff are hoping to be able to fund.

Oxford Mail deputy editor Sara Taylor said: “It was a tough choice picking our finalists, but we thought these five projects had the potential to be really inspiring and change a lot of children’s lives at school.  “Now it is over to pupils, staff, communities and our readers to collect as many of the special tokens we’ll be printing in the Mail from Monday.”

Leadbitter regional director Richard Nixon said: “I thoroughly enjoyed sitting down with the team and reading the applications.  “There was lots of stuff to go through and I thought it was of a very high standard. Obviously a lot of effort had been put in by pupils and staff.”

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EDITH Moorhouse School is hoping to win the cash to spend on upgrading its activity centre and adventure playground area.

In its application, the school described its existing adventure playground as “outdated and damaged”, including a section which was condemned in the autumn term last year and had to be removed.

Childrens Plan of New Playground

Deputy headteacher Sam Bartholomew said: “It would be a great opportunity for children to have the challenge and use their free time to improve their strength, agility and fitness to become better athletes in the future.”

He said the facility could help improve children’s overall health, provide access to physical activities for children of all abilities, improve balance and core strength and aid hand-eye co-ordination, among other benefits.

He added: “All of these factors can be attributed to aiding youngsters in following their dreams and ambitions, whether they turn their attentions to athletics and the future Olympics or they want to become marine biologists and go diving or our future service personnel.”