A West Norfolk student has proved he is a human dictionary by taking top prize in a spelling contest.
Toby Bunting, a Year 7 student at St Clement’s High in Terrington St Clement, won the annual West Norfolk Academies Trust Spelling Bee contest.
As well as competing against his classmates, it also featured students from Marshland High School in West Walton, Springwood High School in King’s Lynn and Smithdon High School in Hunstanton.
The event was hosted by Elly Kyasiima, English teacher at Springwood, with Stefan Leverton, who also teaches English at the school, reading out the words for the contestants to spell.
“Each of the four schools in the Trust held rounds in Years 7 and 8,” explained Mrs Murkin. “Those students with the highest scores in spelling tests for the competition were selected to represent their schools in the final.”
Second place went to Evie Neill, also a pupil at St Clement’s.
The school’s librarian Gemma Coker said: “Toby was calm and confident throughout, and I have no doubt he could have gone on to spell more and trickier words. He’d even practised, and could spell perfectly, ‘antidisestablishmentarianism’.”
“Evie successfully spelt words such as ‘fraction’, ‘protocol’, and ‘abstraction’, but finally lost in the final two to the word ‘infinite’, She said she knew exactly how to spell the word, but the nerves got to her.
But the event was held on Evie’s birthday which meant the 250-strong crowd sang Happy Birthday to her.
