Elly Resch has won Minterne's Olympic Train set for her imaginative and quirky story about a spy school.  Read her winning entry here:-

As I stepped onto the busy station platform, I saw dad pushing his way towards me.  He looked worried and I knew I had to think of a way of explaining where I’d been that day.  I couldn’t tell him I’d been to Mr. Hopkinsons’s Spy School, because he wouldn’t believe me and I vowed to the Headmaster, Mr. Hopkinson, that I wouldn’t break the school’s code:

1. Never tell anyone about the school, unless they have a pin badge

(When someone begins at Mr. Hopkinson’s Spy School, they get a pin badge with the school crest on)

1. Follow the school motto at all times; ‘Be resourceful, Be ready, Be remarkable’
2. Be well behaved 100% of the time and listen to your teachers

I vowed in front of the whole school, not something I was going to forget.  Miss Mac’s, the Deputy Head, didn’t like me much as every other pupil in the school was from a spy family.  Everyone, but Mr. Hopkinson, thought I wasn’t – including me, so, she was probably spying on me, with hidden cameras and other gadgets I don’t know about, so, I’d better not even think about telling dad the truth. 

As dad drew closer, I had to think of something fast, ‘Mum took me to day-school?’.  Maybe.  What about, ‘I went to space?’, no, he’d believe the truth more than that!  I supposed I’d have to say the ‘mum thing’, it wasn’t great, but it would have to do.  I’d explain the lessons in such detail he’d be proud of me and forget about being angry, we would go home and have dinner.  I thought about the lessons at spy school and tried to make the lessons normal:

G.T.L. (Gadget Technology Lesson) would become I.C.T. (Information Communication Technology)

          Self-defence lesson would become P.E. (Physical Education)

          The History of Spies would become History

          Art would become...Art

Instead of getting a shrinking pod in G.T.L., we would have made podcasts in I.C.T..  In Self-defence, instead of using nunchucks, we would have used the apparatus in P.E..  In History, we would learn about cavemen, instead of learning about the first spy, Henry Mavelot.  In Art, we would have drawn some pine trees, instead of a top secret base we designed.