An all-boys’ school from London has won the first spelling championship for schools, The Times Spelling Bee.

The contestants from St Martin’s School, Northwood, northwest London, fought off strong competition to be crowned national champion spellers. Jonah Surkes, Dylan Amin and Prahalad Prasad, all aged 12, gained 115 points to win the title. They spelt cannonade, fluorescent, accretion and contemporaneous correctly to win.

Ten teams of three competitors from schools around the country battled it out last night to become the first winners of The Times Spelling Bee at the Odeon in Leicester Square.

More than 780 schools entered the competition, which began last October. After 89 local heats and ten semi-finals the top ten gathered for a tense final. Teams took part in two heats, a quick-fire round and a knockout.

Jonah, the winning speller, said: “The whole school have been behind us.” He wants to be a businessman, while his team-mates have aspirations to be a lawyer and a surgeon.

His father, Tony, a dentist, said that his son “gobbled books” and asked his parents to test him every night.

The team won trophies, dictionaries and the chance to edit the Young Times section of The Times.

Bishop Wordsworth’s School in Wiltshire came second and Welland Park Community College in Leicestershire was third. Words they spelt correctly included ichthyology, analgesic, Byzantine, vestigial, pirouette, zephyr, outmanoeuvre and repertoire.

James Harding, the Editor of The Times, congratulated the finalists and said he was taken aback at the high standard of the contestants. He said: “For The Times, spelling is essential to what we do. It can be infuriating and excruciating but this makes it exciting and exhilarating.”

Ed Balls, the Schools Secretary, said: “For those with a competitive bent spelling bees are a great way of learning. The Times championship, with its online tests, is a really good example of how new technology can be used to learn old skills in a fun way. So well done and many congratulations to all the winners.”

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