Devon's biggest secondary school, Exmouth Community College, has won its bid for specialist status.

Exmouth will become a specialist college for maths and information and communications technology in September

The award will mean an extra £274,000 a year for the college for the next four years as well as a single payment of £150,000 to be spent on building work. In all the new status is worth nearly £1.3 million.

Principal, Tony Alexander, said: 'I believe this will help to raise achievement throughout the college.

'ICT has an impact right across the curriculum. This will enable us to make the curriculum more relevant and more exciting for our students.'

Mr Alexander said the college would be developing two brand new ICT suites with 80 machines as well as an extension to the maths department which would house a maths workshop.

Another 24 interactive whiteboards, which allow teachers and students to display work in the classroom and network it to pupils' own computer terminals, would be installed in the maths department and those ICT suites which currently did not have them.

The college was also hoping to employ more teachers to reduce class sizes and was planning to equip every member of the teaching staff with a laptop computer.

But the specialist status will not just benefit the 2,400 students at the college.

'Our work with our feeder primary schools is critical," said Mr Alexander.

'We are planning to have a member of staff dedicated to improving the links between the college and the primary schools.

'We hope to have 30 laptops available for use in the primaries with adequate technical support and we are planning to have shared staff training.

'We will also be able to increase the work we do in the community and we are aiming to have another 30 laptops available for local people to use.

'Currently we are discussing ways of how we might be able to take the ICT equipment out to the people rather then have them come to us and that might mean making it available in village halls and so on.'

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