That was the impressive achievement five year-seven students from The Littlehampton Academy were praised for, during an awards ceremony. Almost 100 11- and 12-year-olds were congratulated by Bognor Regis and Littlehampton MP, Nick Gibb, for reading dozens of books in their spare time. Mr Gibb, who is also the schools minister, presented awards to all the academy’s top young readers who, since September, have read more than 250,000, 500,000 or 1,000,000 words. Mr Gibb said: “It was a real pleasure to be able to award certificates to those year seven students who read up to 250,000 words, in their own time at home. “No-one can over-estimate the importance of reading. “Simply reading for half-an-hour every day throughout your spare time is worth a full year’s worth of education by the time you are 15. “So for the academy to be actively encouraging this is a fantastic step forward and I wish to encourage them to maintain this scheme.” Among the top readers from the year group were Kelan Pannell, Elizabeth Quiggan, Harrison Dexter, Olivia Wingfield and Laura Nairne who all became “word millionaires”, reading between them more than five million words written across dozens of different books. In previous years, the academy has invested heavily in the Accelerated Reader scheme which encourages youngsters to read in their own time. The scheme notes how many books each child reads, and tallies up the words within them, to give an overall count. Students are then tested about those books, to prove they have read them. Children taking part in last year’s scheme at the academy read about 3,000 books totalling, between them, an impressive 80 million words.