A TRIO of Kingswinford pupils have been rewarded after competing against thousands of youngsters from across the UK in a national creative writing competition.

Crestwood School students Chloe Roden, Tony Williams and Zeba Saeed all made the shortlist of the British Illustrated Chronicle’s (BIC) contest.

The pupils were among 50 young writers from the Bromley Lane school who entered the competition, which aimed to encourage secondary school pupils to handwrite.

The BIC, the UK’s first handwritten newspaper for teens, unveiled its creative writing competition in May this year, in partnership with popular author Nick Hornby’s charity Ministry of Stories.

Teenagers aged between 12 and 15 were asked to write their tale of “A World Without Words” to be in with a chance of having their short story published in the BIC.

For making the shortlist, the Crestwood youngsters were rewarded with a credit on page 15 of the newspaper.

Jonathan Skyrme, general manager at BIC, said: “For this year’s campaign we wanted to create something unique, with real standout.

“The BIC is a genuine work of art that is the result of a huge amount of work, and it shows that handcrafted items are inspiring.

“Our research has shown that people would rather receive something handwritten than typed, and our aim is that the newspaper prompts others to pick up a pen and take the time to write by hand.”

The launch of the paper came off the back of the latest SATs results which revealed that over a quarter of children in year 6 are not meeting the expected standard in writing.

While BIC’s own study has shown that just one per cent of teens use handwriting to communicate, yet three quarters admit they would prefer to receive a handwritten note or letter over any other form of communication.