BBC star visits Bradford school to read competition winner's entry

A student from Bradforschool had her winning entry in a school competition read out by a BBC star.

Student Falak Imran, from Bradford’s Carlton Bolling school, had her winning entry in this year’s storytelling school competition read out by Abdullah Afzal, BBC’s Citizen Khan actor and writer of the world’s first Muslim Panto.

Over 400 students took parin this year’s competition - part of the National Storytelling Week- to encourage more young people to participate in creative writing and to uncover hidden talents among students.

English teachers at Carlton Bolling School led creative writing workshops leading up to the competition to help prepare the students for their entries.

Headmaster Mohammed Azum said: “As part of national storytelling week, we launched a creative writing competition. We facilitated writing workshops led by English teachers to support our students in preparing their entries. The response from the students was remarkable as we had close to 400 entries at the close. This is a great example of what makes Carlton Bolling 'outstanding' - our 'World Class' students. We were fortunate to have Abdullah Afzal read the winning entry to our nine finalists. All students who entered were winners in our eyes. Our core values of respect, resilience and ambition were demonstrated throughout the process. The students have made all the staff very proud, and we are now excited for the next event, which will be the poetry competition”.

Actor and writer Abdullah Afzal said: “It was great to see so many students express themselves with their creative writing, such fantastic imaginative stories that really showed the talent there is in Bradford. I hope the words I shared about my journey motivated the students to never give up and to always chase their dreams and goals. It was a pleasure be part of a great project and I look forward to visiting the school again in the future alongside my charitable work with Penny Appeal - who are providing the school with food packs for low incomes families - but also in getting the charity's founder to hold mentoring talks with the students at this amazing school."

Carlton Bolling School, based in Bradford in the heart of the community, has made a remarkable turnaround from its past troubles. The school was once rated inadequate but has since received several awards including the Pearson National Teaching Award for ‘Secondary School of the Year – Making a Difference.’

This article was written by Haleema Saheed and originally published at The Telegraph & Argus.