Pupils of Rosh Pinah Primary School in Edgware have won £5,000 worth of books after winning a national reading contest.

They clocked up the most reading time in March in a competition where children from schools across the country were challenged to collectively achieve 100 million minutes of reading during the month.

Overall, the 200,000 participants recorded 100,019,560 minutes between them — and Rosh Pinah notched up the highest amount for an individual school with 9,626,802.

Pupils read 20 to 30 minutes every day and the results were recorded on the website of the 100 Million Minutes Reading Challenge, set up by education charity Achievement for All and bookseller Book People.

Katie Presser, Rosh Pinah librarian, said: “We promote ‘Reading for Pleasure’ on a daily basis and I am delighted that as a whole school working as a team, we achieved such an amazing result.”

Headteacher Jill Howson was “overwhelmed and extremely proud of all of our pupils who worked so hard during March to do as much extra reading as they could”.