A flair for design has won a Sandwich Technology School student a top national award.

Year 10 graphics student Billy-Joe Poole beat 5,000 other hopefuls to win the Best Free Design award in a competition organised by PrintIT in conjunction with the Fairtrade Foundation.

His achievement was announced at an awards ceremony in London.

Billy-Joe and some of his fellow students entered the competition to design a range of products to promote fair trade in cafes.

There were a number of different categories and several thousand students were involved nationwide.

Dianne Marsden, lead teacher for design technology at the school, said: “To our absolute delight, Billy-Joe won the award for Best Free Design.

“To put this into context, 23,000 students registered for the competition, 570 schools submitted work and there were nearly 5,000 final entries. This makes Billy-Joe’s achievement considerable.”

Hetty Bax, Bianca Klaric, Lula Main and Katie Williamson received certificates of merit for the work that they submitted.