Five students at Oldham Sixth Form have won an award celebrating the languages spoken in UK schools.

The Spanish students won in the Year 12 and Year 13 Category of the North West Mother Tongue Other Tongue Competition for their language efforts.

The students’ poetry will now be published, and they will get to attend an event hosted by former UK Poet Laureate Professor Carol Ann Duffy DBE – who leads the multilingual poetry competition.

The competition aims to celebrate cultural diversity and the many languages spoken in schools in the UK by getting students to write a poem.

Split into two sections, students who speak a language other than English at home enter the ‘Mother Tongue’ section, with students who are learning another language at school entering the ‘Other Tongue’ section of the contest.

Oldham Sixth Form College A-Level students Teddy Bland, Keira Allcock, Jessica Pickard and Kenzie Goulding won the ‘Other Tongue’ section of the contest, with AS Level student Amina Begum winning in the ‘Mother Tongue’ section.

The competition is coordinated nationally by the Manchester Poetry Library at Manchester Metropolitan University and is also officially endorsed by Malala Yousafzai, the youngest person ever to win the Nobel Peace Prize.

Student Kenzie Goulding said: “The competition gave me the opportunity to practice my Spanish in a fun and creative way. I enjoyed writing about something that was important to me and sent a message.”

Fellow winner Keira Allcock added: “Being encouraged to do the competition was a great opportunity as it pushed me out of my comfort zone and in the end I really enjoyed writing the poem.

“It’s definitely inspired me to look into more poetry in the future.”

Student Teddy Bland said: “My poem was about the countryside, and I learned a lot of new descriptive words in Spanish.

“I’m excited to go to the poetry evening because it sounds fancy, and I can meet new people like Carol Ann Duffy.”

Gemma Curto, Tutor for Spanish, is delighted with this latest success, adding: “During these strange times, both writing competitions have allowed the students to demonstrate their creativity and to think from a completely different perspective.

“Learning a new language broadens your mind and allows you to think big.

“The competitions recognise cultural and linguistic diversity and our students have produced original and truly inspirational written work in Spanish.”

The poems titled ‘Paseo solitario bajo el sol poniente’ (Teddy Bland), ‘Libro de reglas de la mujer’ (Kenzie Goulding), ‘Cerramos la cortina’ (Keira Allock), ‘Ucraina’ (Jessica Pickard) and ‘Que te voy a echar de menos’ (Amina Begum) are going to be published in the competition anthology.

Carol Ann Duffy will host two events on July 14, which students will attend.

All attendees will be offered an opportunity to take part a celebration event, in which Duffy will present this year’s anthology to the college students along with a Certificate of Achievement.