A TEACHER from a Beaconsfield School was one of the stars of the show at the recent Paralympic torch lighting.

Denise Knibbs, a PE co-ordinator at Alfriston School in Penn Road, Beaconsfield, was recently part of the Heritage Flame lighting earlier this month.

She said: “The event went brilliantly well, it felt such a big honour to be the local representative.

“All throughout the rehearsals I had to keep pinching myself, it was all surreal.

“Since then I have not touched the ground. We were all allowed to keep our torches and I have bought my torch into school for all the children to hold and have their pictures with it.”

Olympic and Paralympic stars, Katherine Grainger and Hannah Cockcroft were also involved in the ceremony, with Mrs Knibbs taking the role of Buckinghamshire’s representative.

Having taught at Alfriston School for almost 20 years, Mrs Knibbs has helped lots of children and also worked hard to get children motivated to compete in sports.

She said: “I got to be the representative for the work I have done for disability sports and how we have worked as a school to help other schools with disability sports.”

Alfriston School caters for students with a wider range of special educational needs.

Most pupils at Alfriston have moderate learning difficulties, and a large majority have additional needs, such as speech, language and communication difficulties, sensory impairment, physical difficulty or other learning difficulties and disabilities.

One of the projects Mrs Knibbs has been working on is a link in Finland, where there have been exchanges with the pupils.

Mrs Knibbs said: “I went to Finland last week and because it is their winter they were all really excited about the games and said it had inspired them to do more sport.”