YEAR 10 pupils from Woodroffe School in Lyme Regis have beaten other South West schools to win the regional heat of a business development competition.

Woodroffe took the title this week in the Lionheart Challenge with their vision for a school of the future in which pupils could attend virtual lectures by Nelson Mandela and teachers became guides through a knowledge centre that looked like the Eden project.

Their ideas so impressed the judges that the team qualified for the national final in London on Tuesday where they will come up against nine other winning UK schools.

The team, who were supervised by their head of year and Alan Brown and Marcus Dixon, of Lyme Regis Development Trust, will be asked to develop a business plan for a project on a national scale and will present their ideas to a panel of judges at the Royal Horseguards Hotel.

They will also attend a gala dinner and awards ceremony where the winners will be announced by Sir Howard Davis, director of the London School of Economics.

An ace team of pupils, chosen especially for their skills in maths, IT, business and presentation, took part in the event and will go on to the final next week.

They are Ross Board, Andrew Stiles, Peter O'Shea, Will Hitchcock, Jody Rylance, Amy Waite-Johnson, Charlotte Sargent and Lucy Hunt.