Flint students win national competition to design Royal Mail stamps celebrating pandemic heroes

Two Flint High School students have designed a special set of stamps that will soon be on sale nationwide.

Shachow Ali and Jessica Roberts were among the eight winners of Royal Mail's Heroes Stamp Design Competition, hand-picked from over half a million entries from across the UK.

The competition was created to honour those who have "gone above and beyond to help others" during the pandemic.

The Prince of Wales hosted a special reception at Clarence House to meet the eight students and celebrate their success. He was responsible for the final selection of the winning designs, which were also approved by The Queen.

Eleven-year-old Shachow Ali's stamp design featured Captain Sir Tom Moore, who raised almost £33m for NHS charities by walking laps of his garden during the pandemic.

Meanwhile, Jessica Roberts dedicated her design to the health care "heroes" from around the world.

"I chose Captain Tom Moore because I was inspired by his hard-working attitude to help others in need and NHS charities and such," Shachow said.

"I was very shocked. I didn't expect to make such progress in the competition."

Both students won the royal stamp of approval from the "very nice" Prince Charles, telling Jessica that she would pass her art GCSEs and A-Levels with "flying colours."

The competition achieved a Guinness World Records title for the largest postage stamp design competition, receiving 606,049 entries from 7,479 schools across the UK.

Flint High School art teacher Miss Evans said that it was a great achievement for the students and school alike."Especially from Flint, a small school in north Wales. And myself as an art teacher, I'm just so proud of the children and what they've achieved," she said."Seeing their work actually on stamps today coming into school, it's lovely."

The students' designs will be made into a special collectible issue of stamps, which will be on general sale from 23rd March.