PROMISING young students at Felixstowe's Deben High School are celebrating after they were given special awards to mark outstanding achievement.The hard-working year seven, eight and nine pupils were handed the new awards in a special school assembly at the Garrison Lane school.

PROMISING young students at Felixstowe's Deben High School are celebrating after they were given special awards to mark outstanding achievement.

The hard-working year seven, eight and nine pupils were handed the new awards in a special school assembly at the Garrison Lane school.

For these youngsters, who have yet to sit GCSE exams, the awards have been created to recognise achievement during the first three years at the school.

Headmaster Terry Ring said: "This is a school which has a long history of success in many subjects such as drama, school concerts, art shows and school sports. The purpose of today is to recognise the achievement of Key Stage Three pupils."

The awards, which are supported by the Co-op, are the brainchild of assistant head teacher Andrew Salter, who presented awards to pupils who had learnt such musical instruments at the school such as piano, flute and clarinet while at Deben High.

Mr Salter, who is also in charge of student achievement, said he thought the hard work shown by the pupils at Deben was incredible.

"It was developed last September and the students seem to love it. It has created friendly rivalries between pupils who want to get as many awards as they can and also acts as a spur to other children who have seen the children get awards today and want to be up here picking up an award themselves."

Pupils receive achievement awards in different subjects for a variety of reasons, such as hard work. These points totals are totted up with 25 awards gaining a silver certificate and 50 gaining a gold.

Due to the incredible success of the awards, three students have picked up diamond awards, given out for gaining 100 awards.

As well as getting a certificate, these three pupils will have their name added to a new board, which will display all future diamond award pupils.

Mr Salter also paid tribute to members of the school's sixth form who have created their own company through the Young Enterprise scheme.

Jonathan Hazzlewood, Thomas Parish, Paul Sherratt and Marly Dyer have established Kicflip clothing, which makes a range of clothes for skateboarders.

They will represent Suffolk at the East of England finals due to be held in Cambridge on June 24.

Mr Ring said this successful venture highlighted some important lessons for these pupils to take into the outside world: "It's a tremendous achievement which will stand them in good stead for the future – they've had to learn about raising money and budgeting finances. They've set up a website and have had to make presentations and they are even thinking about accepting on-line credit card payments for t-shits. I am delighted."