FCJ, St Lawrence and Mont à l’Abbé schools collected the most tokens – 60,000 between them – in their respective categories and were each awarded prizes of £2,000.
Trinity, Samarès and Beaulieu schools shared a separate prize of £5,000, awarded by sponsors The One Foundation. The three schools were chosen to share the prize after submitting videos explaining why they should win and what they would spend the money on.
A total of 209,000 tokens printed in the JEP were collected by 20 Island schools. For this year’s competition, which was launched in September, the schools were divided into three categories, according to their size.
Liz Searle, deputy head at Mont à l’Abbé, which won the prize for collecting the most tokens for a school with fewer than 200 pupils, said it was a great privilege to have won.
‘We are very grateful to everyone who kindly donated their tokens to us,’ she said. ‘We will be using the money for art equipment and materials because art is such an important medium of expression for children with communication difficulties.
‘We hope it will help to improve their social integration and communication skills.’
Nichola Turner, head of Trinity School, which shared The One Foundation prize of £5,000, said it was ‘brilliant’ that the prize had been split between three schools.
‘We would like to use the money to introduce a book scheme for pre-school children which will allow them to share a book and have a story time,’ she said. ‘We will be spending money on new stock for the library and introducing comfy furnishings.’
£18,000 worth of prizes was given away as part of the competition, including £9,000 for the winning and second-placed schools, £5,000 for The One Foundation prize and £4,000 in eight weekly spot prizes, donated by Form (CI) Ltd..
Lorenzo Nardone, marketing manager at the JEP, said the competition, which was first started in 2010, was a fantastic opportunity for schools and he hoped to run it again next year.
‘It’s a great opportunity for children in schools to get together and enter a competition which gives them the chance to win great prizes that can benefit their school environment,’ he said. ‘Congratulations to all the winners. We are already looking forward to bringing the competition back next year.
‘Once again many thanks to the Radisson Blu Hotel for hosting the event.’
