A TEACHER from St Andrew's School at Buckland Monachorum travelled to Exeter last week to receive a prestigious teaching award.

Teena Wallis joined 12 other professionals in Devon who have passed the reading recovery training programme, a scheme which helps the lowest achieving six-year-olds to substantially boost their standard of literacy.

Four out of five children attending reading recovery programmes return to lessons as successfully literate pupils, after an intensive course of one-to-one lessons with the specially trained teachers.

The teachers who have completed the training programme undertook more than 400 hours of special lessons during the year, plus special training sessions every fortnight in Exeter.