IT HAS been a month of impressive achievements for students at one north Cumbria secondary school.

Poppy Gregory, year eleven student at William Howard School in Brampton, kicked off the month by competing in the north west regional final of the national Future Chef competition.

Held in Manchester, the event pitted Poppy’s culinary skills against other young chefs from across the north west of England.

Karen Williams, spokeswoman for the school, said that “it was a very close competition, but in the end Poppy was narrowly pipped to the post.

“She was very highly commended by the judges on her work ethic.

“Congratulations to Poppy - it was a fantastic achievement to make it to this level in the competition.”

Another of the school’s big achievements came last week, when William Howard school students Oliver Wightman, Thomas Armstrong and Connor Dixon represented Cumbria at the Lord Taverner’s north west regional boccia tournament.

Boccia is a precision sport similar to bowls. Featured in the Paralympics since 1984, it is a wheelchair sport accessible to people with a wide variety of physical disabilities.

The boccia tournament, which took place last Thursday, pitted the three William Howard students against teams from across the north west, from Cheshire to Lancashire.

Karen Williams said that their final match, against a team from Hebden Green in Cheshire, was a “closely fought match”, ending 6-5 in favour of the Cheshire team.

“The final end had to be measured by three different referees to decide the final score,” she added.

“They then played in a play-off match against Ullswater Community College and again won this convincingly.”

Their play-off victory led them to finish third overall.