We are delighted to announce that Newstead Wood School in Kent has won £1000 worth of prizes for the Gold Award in the Japan Webpage Contest for Schools 2011-2012. All prizes were announced at an award ceremony and presentation afternoon, held on Saturday 17^th March 2012 at the Hotel Russell in London. 

Newstead Wood School captivated the judges with their fantastic website packed full information about their activities, trips and classes, as well as fantastic student work, photos, Japanese language resources and much, much more! The judges mentioned that the site is a bit like a treasure chest as they found more interesting nuggets of information each time they visited! This website also won the Public Vote Award, gaining an impressive 1042 votes out of 4363, almost 24% of the total votes.

The Silver Award was presented to Tenbury C of E Primary School for their website that is packed full of inspirational ideas for Japan related topics and lessons at Primary school level. You can take a peek at the Voki quizzes, play games to practice hiragana and katakana or spend hours watching the fantastic recordings of Kamishibai.

The Bronze award went to Heathfield House School for their brightly coloured, original and fun website. This website is great fun to look through as it is full of photographs of Japan related activities and has some thoughtful comments from the pupils themselves!

Finally, Luton Sixth Form won the Design Award as they impressed the judges with their stylish web design, and large range of content. The judges really liked the language section as well as the student work which showcases what fantastic group of artists they are!

The award ceremony was an excellent chance for pupils from each of these winning schools to display their webpages and tell the audience about their fantastic Japan–related projects. The ladies from Newstead High were delighted to win the top prize and Tenbury Primary school pupils wowed the audience by performing their Algorithm March. One parent, Hanna White mentioned that ‘The children’s presentations were wonderful. A great way to cement relations between our two countries!’ Another attendee, Cathy Darling, mentioned it was good to have ‘the opportunity to finally meet the creators of the competing websites we’d spent too many hours perusing.’ The final highlight for many of the children was the delicious range of sushi provided at the reception, which disappeared remarkably quickly!

You can see more information and links to all of the wonderful entries on the contest website here. Hopefully other schools will be inspired to start a similar webpages, and will join the Japan Webpage Contest for Schools in the future!