Pupils hold home-baking sale to help teacher who lost her home

Zylan Wells and Zac Thompson from Room Nine, show off some of the baking they were selling on Friday.

When a much-loved teacher's house burned down, pupils at Stratford Primary sprang into action.

"We did lots of baking to help Miss Collins buy a new house," explains 6-year-old Fletcher Kerr. "I did lots of the stirring to help my mum make a marble cake."

As well as a bake sale and sausage sizzle, pupils also showed their love with their words on posters at the bake sale.

Fletcher and his classmates in room 9 were running a cake stall on Broadway on Friday, to raise money for their class teacher, Lucy Collins.

Lucy and her partner lost their house and all its contents when their house in Urenui caught fire on Sunday, May 26.

While Lucy was off work dealing with it, her class of five to 7-year-olds got to work fundraising to help.

The school held a sausage sizzle, and the pupils started baking, ready to sell their wares at Friday's bake stall in town.

As well as running the stall, pupils also visited local businesses selling the cakes and biscuits as well as running a raffle.

In total, the youngsters raised $2925 from the raffle, bake sale and sausage sizzle.

Fletcher says helping his teacher was something they all wanted to do.

"Miss Collins is really nice. We all love her."