VIDEO: Thrills and spills in William Alvey School soapbox race

Since completion of their SATs exams at half-term, Year 6 pupils at William Alvey School have been taking pains over brainstorming, designing, building and testing their own push-along go-karts.

Just before the end of term, parents were invited along to cheer on the teams of children as they took turns to do four laps of a track laid out on the playground in the quickest time, coming into ‘the pits’ after each lap to change drivers.

As well as a prize for the fastest circuit, there were also awards for the best design, decided by part-time racing driver Mark Reynolds, who races in the Classic Touring Car Racing Club series and is currently leading his class.

His wife, Elizabeth, is a teacher at the school and he offered to bring his racing car in as a treat for the children to sit in and rev the engine.

He said: “When she told me what they were doing I offered to bring the car up.

“It has been a great effort by the boys and girls and I could see some engineers of tomorrow.

“In these days it is nice to see kids getting hands on and making something physical - away from computers.”

The children spent a couple of hours a day working on the project over the last three weeks under supervision of staff.

The school is now condsidering repeating the event next year.