Festival of speed: Worthing pupils having an amazing day racing Goblin cars

Teachers at Chesswood Junior School in Worthing were determined the race day would go ahead on Friday, despite many obstacles in the build-up, and the children had an amazing day of racing in the sunshine.

Year-six pupils had worked on the project for the whole week, with the six classes each forming a team for the races.

They chose their own team name and theme, then developed it with logos for t-shirts and designs for the Goblin cars, which they built from scratch.

The class concepts chosen were Mighty Hornet, Flaming Phoenix, Troll Trollogy, Euro Wizard, Silver Bullets and Dinosaurs.

Mrs Jo Pearce, year-six leader, said: “Over the past week, we have been designers, planning and creating our team logos and car bunting to advertise our brand.

“We have been entrepreneurs, planning and pricing refreshments for the festival and aiming to make a profit for our school, and lastly, we have been engineers, building our Goblin cars in a rotation of different teams, ready to race at the festival.

“Although our classes compete with each other, as one, we are a team, and after a year of lockdowns and isolations, we were excited to celebrate together in our penultimate week of junior school.”

Normally, the parents would have been invited to watch the racing but with Covid restrictions in place, the year-six children raced to the cheers of other pupils, with each year group being brought out separately to join in the fun.

Mrs Pearce added: “It was not without its challenges but we spent the whole week working on this project and it has been amazing for them, a wonderful end to a difficult year.”