Four pupils from Carlton Community College are flying high after completing a Kes-inspired falconry project.
Year 11 pupils Tom Parkin, Jake Aspinwall and Josh Slater, along with year ten girl Abbie Eaton, have all passed a ten-week course training Harris hawks.
The project, funded by the school, aims to help pupils disinterested in education and is run in conjunction with James McKay at the National Falconry School in Derbyshire, who supplied the birds for the Harry Potter films.
While on the course pupils continue with their school work and are set clear guidelines for the behaviour expected from them on the course, as well as at home and at school.
Project leader Chris Corker, a Berneslai Homes' housing management officer, said: "They have to learn to do things like tie a falconer knot, which is done with one hand, handle a bird and how to get the bird to fly to themselves.
"You see a massive change in the pupils over the ten weeks of the course, from how they see themselves to their attitude towards school work.
"They start believing they can do things rather than using that banned four letter word 'can't'. It really does work."
Abbie, of Royston, loved working with birds of prey and being out in the countryside. "It's been the best experience ever and I think it's the countryside and something about nature I like."
Her mum, Joanne France, added: "She's really interested in things like that and I am very proud of her." Abbie and the three lads were all presented with certificates, along with a gauntlet glove and birds of prey book signed by Dai Bradley, who played Billy Casper in the film Kes.
