Former X Factor star, Olly Murs, 34, visited students at St Luke’s R.C. Primary School in Salford yesterday as part of the Premier League Writing Stars competition.

Murs met with key stage two students to partake in a poetry lesson on diversity, where he was able to encourage students to express their thoughts and feelings through writing.

He is on the judging panel for this year’s competition, where he will be joined by former Manchester United footballer Rio Ferdinand, children’s author Lauren Child and performance poet Joseph Coelho. Casia Wiliam, the current Welsh-language Children’s Poet Laureate, will guest judge all Welsh-language entries

This lesson was brought to St Luke’s by the Manchester United Foundation, who support the Premier League Primary Stars education programme that work to inspire primary school children in all academic work.

Murs said: “I thought it was just amazing to see kids of that age, learning so much about diversity […] They’ve just wrote on their pages: tolerance, acceptance, individuality and respect.”

The class performed a poem with the backing track of Olly Murs’ latest single “Moves.”

He added: “It’s fantastic to see, and to do it to my own song, was pretty awesome as well.”

This competition is run by the National Literacy Trust and is open to all schools across the country and in Wales. This year they want the students to take inspiration from the poem written for the competition “Beautifully different, wonderfully the same” by Joseph Coelho.

The winner of the competition will be announced on the 21st of December, where there will be an overall winner and ten runner-ups who will be awarded with “money-can’t-buy prizes”.

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