Tom Taylor's clever hand-printed design which includes his school's values was chosen as the winner in a primary school competition to design a statue for the Norfolk leg of the forthcoming Elephant Parade national tour.

More than 70 children from Forncett Primary School, in Alsacton Road, Forncett St Peter, near Wymondham, entered the contest to have their design painted onto the model elephant, which is currently sitting in the school's reception area.

Having drawn their design onto an outline of an elephant on an A4 piece of paper, the entries were all laid out on tables for headteacher Judith Jones, Andrew Papworth, EDP reporter and editor of our sister title, the Diss Mercury, and Sheridan Smith, director of the intu Chapelfield shopping centre in Norwich - where the elephant will be displayed - for judging.

'It was very difficult to judge because the entries were of such good quality and so much effort had been put into each one,' said Mr Papworth after the judging.

'It was extraordinarily hard to pick out a single winner because all the children had done so well.'

In the end Tom Taylor's design stood out, the judges said, because it would allow all the pupils at the school to have an input.

The six-year-old wrote on his entry that his idea was for all his fellow pupils to put their hand-prints on the elephant alongside the school's 12 values of friendship, forgiveness, honesty, respect, thankfulness, compassion, co-operation, trust, responsibility, perseverance, courage and creativity.

Tom said he was 'really, really happy' to have won.

Pupils will start working on putting his design onto the elephant over the next month so it is ready for display at intu Chapelfield for four weeks from April 7.

However the judges were impressed by so many of the designs they also decided to pick out three others as highly-commended.

Mali-Star Billingham, 9, whose flowery design was one of those, said: 'Elephants are really, really lovely animals and I wanted to show how nice they are.'

11-year-old Victoria Humphrey's Superman-style elephant was also highly-commended along with 10-year-old Lily Allum's incredibly detailed design, where she pasted photos of trees, wildlife and elephants onto her design to create a collage.

Mrs Smith, who had previously given a talk to pupils at Forncett Primary School, said she was 'very impressed with the thought and artistic ability of the children'.

She added: 'They'd obviously taken on board the things I said earlier about the plight of Asian elephants. So many of the designs reflected their love of elephants.'

Mrs Jones said: 'The children love a competition and this one really made them think about things happening on a worldwide level.

'A lot of learning has come out of it. It is not just a colouring competition - it has made them think more deeply.'

What is going on at your child's school? Email EDPNewsdesk@archant.co.uk