A spell of bad luck suffered by a Carlisle school has finally been lifted, with pupils set to travel to London's West End to see the spellbinding musical Wicked.

Classrooms at Newman School were destroyed when Storm Desmond struck the city in December 2015, and lessons moved to a site on Harraby's Silverdale Road.

The school was filled with about 7ft of contaminated flood water, damaging everything from IT equipment to the brand new sports hall.

In a bid to lift spirits, staff at the school, where there is a strong interest in theatre and performing arts, decided to enter the "Everyone Deserves a Chance to Travel" organised by Blackpool-based WST School Travel.

Newman, where pupils are this year working on a production of Annie, was just one of hundreds of schools to enter, but beat off competition from all others to claim the prize.

Staff now have the difficult decision of choosing just 40 pupils to take the trip to London, where they will see the musical and indulge in a two-course dinner.

"When I saw the competition I had no problem coming up with an idea as to why Newman School's students deserved to win," said Mary Brookes, the school's examinations officer.

"It's over a year since our school was destroyed as Storm Desmond battered our county.

"The building was flooded with contaminated water, up to a height of seven feet, destroying books, IT resources, artwork, technology projects and our newly-built sports hall.

"No department escaped unscathed. The building was unusable, so we have been moved to a temporary location - in a former primary school on the edge of town.

"Our pupils have had to put up with an enormous amount of upheaval and have had to be very resilient.

"One year after the floods, we still don't know where or when our new school will be built.

"I think our pupils deserve this trip, for all that they've had to put up with."

Sian Belfield, customer relations director at WST School Travel, said: "We would like to thank everybody who entered our competition.

"We had the pleasure of reading some fantastic and heartwarming stories of the great work pupils are doing in schools in terms of studying, fundraising, development, inclusion and positive behaviour.

"It was a very close competition and we were delighted to see how many schools embraced the chance to win this day trip, with nearly 4,000 individuals taking the time to vote."

Newman School - still operating from the shell of an old primary school - was dealt another devastating blow last month, when it was plunged into special measures.

Government inspectors published a scathing report into the 600-pupil Catholic secondary school, condemning it as "inadequate".

The school hit back, insisting the school's continuing recovery is nothing short of "miraculous" and improvements made, despite the devastation caused by Storm Desmond, have been "ignored" by inspectors who visited in January.