CHARLTON-on-Otmoor Primary School has the odds stacked against it to win this year’s Leadbitter School Build SOS competition.

They don’t even have a shop within the catchment area to buy copies of the Oxford Mail and collect tokens.

But that hasn’t stopped headteacher Mike Wisbach getting the youngsters enthused in their plans to convert an old classroom into changing rooms and a storage room for outdoor education.

For the fourth year running, the Oxford Mail has teamed up with Abingdon construction company Leadbitter to offer one lucky primary school £7,500 of improvements.

Six schools have been selected as finalists and it is now over to them to collect as many vouchers as possible, weighted according to the number of pupils at a school to ensure the contest is fair.

Mr Wisbach said: “We have sent out a lot of messages asking for help and people are bringing them in.

“We haven’t got any paper shops in our catchment area, in fact we haven’t got any shops at all, so I’m hoping people are collecting them, storing them up at home and will bring them all in a big lump before the deadline.

“We are trying to get pupils to get grannies and relatives to bring in Oxford Mail vouchers.”

As well as benefiting the school directly, it is hoped local cricket and football clubs could also use the facility, if it wins the prize.

Mr Wisbach joked: “The children are coming up with ideas on how to get more tokens, sadly not many of them are legal."

“They have even suggested standing outside the supermarket and going up to people and asking to cut out their tokens but it is quite difficult because there is another school in the final from Kidlington.”

Mr Wisbach added: “It would be very significant and would make a huge difference to us because at the moment we haven’t got anywhere to keep most of our stuff, or get changed. This amount of money doesn’t come along very often and it goes a long way when it does.”

The project would see separate boys and girls changing rooms created plus a place to securely store equipment for the school’s outdoor education programme.

At the moment, gardening equipment is left out on a veranda, which has seen items going missing.

The deadline for collecting tokens is drawing closer, with the last token due to be published in the Mail on Monday and tokens due back to the Oxford Mail by Tuesday.

  • To support Charlton-on-Otmoor’s project, send tokens to the school at Fencott Road, Charlton-on-Otmoor, Kidlington, OX5 2UT