Highworth Grammar School children

Children from 10 schools will each support different nation competing in the Games

Children from 10 Kent schools have been chosen to help form a guard of honour for athletes arriving for the Olympic Games during the opening ceremony.

Students will be lining route as athletes make their way through the Olympic Park into the Olympic Stadium.

They will be joining pupils from 249 schools from around the nation to make a total of 2,000 youngsters that will be at the start of the Athletes’ Parade.

Adding some extra colour and spectacle, the schoolchildren will be holding lanterns and banners they have created to support one of the 204 competing teams. For many of the 10,500 athletes the Guard of Honour will be their first experience of the London 2012 Games.

The children were selected through a reward and recognition programme of the Get Set network, which is the official London 2012 education programme.

Get Set provides free learning resources for three to 19 year olds to find out more about the Games and explore the Olympic values of excellence, friendship and respect, and the Paralympic values of determination, inspiration, courage and equality.

The students had to demonstrate a commitment to living the Olympic and Paralympic values and incorporating them into their school lives and curriculum.

All the children taking part will also get a tour of the Olympic Park before they are seen around the world when film director Danny Boyle’s opening ceremony gets under way, attracting a global audience of billions.

The Athletes’ Parade sees the teams enter the stadium in alphabetical order, apart from the Greek team which enters first, and the team of the host nation which enters last.

Those taking part from Kent are Meopham School; Knockhall Community Primary, Greenhithe; Valence School, Westerham; St. John’s RC Comprehensive School, Gravesend; The Hayesbrook School, Tonbridge; Lenham Primary School, Lenham; Highworth Grammar School, Ashford; Bennett Memorial Diocesan School, Tunbridge Wells; Chaucer Technology School, Canterbury; and Brompton Academy, Gillingham.

David Burren assistant headteacher at Hayesbrook said “We are representing Mali, and our children are delighted to be going along.”