AFTER being shortlisted as the only primary school in the UK to be in the Japanese Foundation UK Awards, Holbrook Primary School in Trowbridge is celebrating achieving third place.

Since September, the children have been learning the Japanese language and the whole year has been designated Japan Year so that children, staff and parents can learn more about the country.

Four pupils Tommy Farr, Ayman Rtabi, Chloe Barton and Annabelle Simenova travelled to London on Saturday on behalf of the school to the UCL Institute of Education, to accept an award from Kenichi Yanagisawa, the director general of the Japan Foundation UK, in recognition of their project in class and online on Japan and Japanese.

After receiving their awards, the 10 schools were then invited to give a short presentation to guests from the British Council, the Association of Language Learning and the Japan Foundation. The four youngsters from Holbrook chose to do theirs as a short drama presentation.

As well as a trophy they also received gift tokens, books and CDs on Japanese and origami paper, which headteacher Roger Whitewick said is going to come in useful as they are working on a project to create 1,000 cranes using the paper and have so far made 300.

Once completed they will go on show in the school before being given to Japanese company Hitachi, which has its headquarters in the town.