30 August 2007

The national winner of the National Prescribing Service Limited (NPS) common colds need common sense, not antibiotics schools competition has been announced. Litchfield Christian School from Humpty Doo in the Northern Territory has won $3000 worth of books for their library and the chance to publish their story.

Runners up in the competition are:

• Wanarn Remote Community School, NT – Early Childhood (highly commended)
• Iramoo Primary School, VIC – Year 6BF (highly commended)
• Aspendale Primary School, VIC – Year 5/6C
• Rockley Public School, NSW – Year 6 (3 students)
• Katanning Primary School, WA – Year 6, room 4
• Iramoo Primary School, VIC – Year 6RL
• Tara Anglican School, NSW – Year 4C

Each runner up will receive $1000 worth of books for their library. The original $5000 prize money from NPS was generously matched by Pan Macmillan Australia to increase the prize pool to $10,000 allowing substantial library purchases for the successful schools.

A total of 56 entries were received from across Australia. Children took part from remote schools in the Northern Territory to public and private schools in all our capital cities. Putting on their creative caps they came up with imaginative, funny and colourful children’s stories for the NPS schools competition.

Ten black-and-white outlines of Harvey the wombat, the campaign mascot, were provided to primary school students and with the help of their teachers they came up with a story about how Harvey stops the spread of his cold at school.

“The calibre of the entries we received was great - so many ideas, interesting story plots and wonderful drawings,” said Hannah Baird, Manager of Community QUM program at NPS.

“It was encouraging to see that primary school children had embraced the personal hygiene messages of the campaign - such as washing your hands, throwing used tissues in the bin and covering your mouth and nose when coughing - to stop their colds from spreading at school”.

The entries were judged by a panel of three judges including Children’s author Lee Fox, whose book Ella Kazoo will not brush her hair was shortlisted for the Children’s Book Council 2007 Book of the Year awards.

“It was a great effort all round,” said Hannah Baird, congratulating not only the winning schools but everyone that made this competition a success.

ENDS