A LIBRARY created at an Oxfordshire school after a four-year gap without the facility has won a national award.

Carterton Community College's library won the School Library Association's Library Design Awards earlier this month.

The library was opened by education expert Sir Tim Brighouse last September.

School librarian Rosemary Stables said: "It is so amazing to have won this award.

“We didn’t have a library and for us to get this award within such a short time of opening it means a lot.”

The predecessor of headteacher Niall McWilliams changed the school's former library into an engineering suite.

Mr McWilliams was eager to reinstate the library, so the equipment was moved out and £35,000 spent on converting the facility back to a library.

Ms Stables added: “The library is well used and the students had a say in how it looked.

“It is a real honour to have won this and we are all very pleased. Everyone has been very positive.”

The competition recognises 'innovation, commitment, flair and foresight' in school libraries and is in its third year.

The library has up to 6,000 books on the shelves with capacity for another couple of thousand.

It beat competition from Comberton Village College in Cambridge and Wyndham Park Infants School in Salisbury.