PUPILS at a primary school in Malmesbury will ace their next spelling tests thanks to a cash donation from a regional builder.

St Joseph’s Catholic Primary School has bought a new dictionary and thesaurus for every child in the school, following a £1,000 from Persimmon Homes Wessex.

Lead teacher in English Ann Wood applied to become one of the builder's community champions and the builder chose the school to benefit from its monthly match-funded donation.

She said: “We are working towards achieving excellence at the school across reading, writing and spelling.

“We have 150 children in the school and to purchase the resources, we were looking at a cost of £10 per student. We had raised funds of £500 so with Persimmon’s generous donation we have reached our target and will be able to buy key stage-specific dictionaries and thesauruses for all our pupils.

“Staff, parents and pupils at St Joseph’s Catholic Primary School would like to say a big thank you to Persimmon Homes Wessex for helping us on our journey towards excellence.”

Pauline Fletcher, sales and marketing director, said: “We strongly believe in supporting the communities where we build. Therefore, we are delighted to be able to support St Joseph’s Catholic Primary School in this way and help local youngsters strive to achieve their academic goals.”

Pauline added that they receive many worthy applications every month, and urged charities who had not been successful to apply again.

To nominate and to find out about the terms and conditions visit persimmonhomes.com/charity