AND they're off! Two Pendle schools are first off the mark in using our NIE Sport Extra project in the classroom to support reading, writing, maths and geography.

Pupils at Wheatley Lane Methodist School, Fence, and Primet High School in Colne, are racing through Wednesday's edition of our newspaper, including the Sport Extra supplement featuring local community and school sports. Along with this, the NIE Sport Extra mini workbook sets out 25 sport related classroom assignments to get brain cells buzzing.

A sport writing opportunity for pupils using the material offers great prizes of a visit to our editorial department to get tips from the top, and superb books from publishers Dorling Kindersley to improve sport skills.

Many other schools have already signed up for the project and will be starting during the coming weeks. And at a fantastic price of only £10 for the basic pack, the material is available to any school in East Lancashire during the summer term.

The Sport Extra project is one of our many schemes supporting the National Year of Literacy; for further details of this or any of our NIE projects, please contact Rita Shaw, NIE co-ordinator, telephone 01254 678678 ext 255, or fax 01254 680429.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.