The Oxford Academy has secured a £50,000 grant from the Big Lottery Fund to keep its 'Old School' programme running long after filming wrapped up.

This year the school ran a project pairing some of its students with older people from the surrounding area including Blackbird Leys and Rose Hill.

Over several months the pairs shared their knowledge and experience and discovered that a number of issues affected them across the generations.

The project was filmed for a BBC TV series with celebrity chefs The Hairy Bikers, the final episode of which airs at 9pm tonight on BBC Two.

Now the school is gearing up to keep running its project and will use the money to support research and development work to roll out the model to benefit more people.

Niall McWilliams, Headteacher at The Oxford Academy, said: “We are delighted to receive this generous development grant which has given us the opportunity to develop the materials, and start to build a plan to expand this programme to support more people and change peoples’ lives.”