A TRIO of students have progressed to the North West final of a public speaking contest.

A team from John Ruskin School, Coniston, won the area and Cumbria and Lancashire heats of the Rotary Youth Speaks 2017 competition.

Now students Tom Stergiakis, Lauryn Kirkbride and Matthew Waring will head to Darwin, Lancashire next month for the North West stage of the contest.

The team speak about the importance of learning languages, a topic of interest for the Year 10 students. It is of particular pertinence to Tom, as Greek is his second language.

They have to speak within a time frame and then take questions from the judges about their speech.

The students work with John Ruskin's English lead, Deb Wright.

Ian Walker, the deputy head at John Ruskin School, said the students are really pleased to be going on in the competition. It is the furthest the school has progressed in the contest.

Mr Walker said: "The interaction between the three students is excellent, the way they respond to one another. The speech is carefully planned, but they still keep it natural and human and put the audience at ease."

Mr Walker said students value effective communication as part of the ethos of the school.

He said John Ruskin is a small school which offers great opportunities.

For the second year running John Ruskin School is celebrating success at national and local level for student progress.

In 2015 the Coniston school was in the top 100 schools in the country for progress and with its most recent GCSE results for 2016 it was in the top three schools in Cumbria based on the new headline Progress 8 measure.