SHOWING racism the red card!

That is schoolchildren across Bury who have have signed up to a national campaign to boot out discrimination by producing a series of hard-hitting posters, stories and poems.

The work is to be displayed in the Mill Gate shopping centre in Bury in April.

But on Friday former England defender and local footballer Earl Barrett will be rewarding the youngsters with prizes at a ceremony at Radcliffe Civic Suite between 10.30am and noon.

And pupils from 18 schools from across the borough taking part will find out who has won the local prizes at the ceremony which may also include Bury FC favourites as well as former Oldham, Aston Villa and former Everton defender Earl.

The work has been produced for a competition sponsored by Show Racism the Red Card, a national charity which runs an annual national schools competition.

The charity is an anti-racist group that aims to produce anti-racist educational resources and hundreds of schools nationally take part in the competition each year.

Locally, Bury Council's curriculum and language access service (CLAS), which works in schools to support black and minority ethnic children -- in particular those who speak English as an additional language -- teamed up with the Asian Development Association of Bury (ADAB) to promote the competition.

Every primary, secondary and special school in the borough was provided with a video, CD-ROM and education pack and pupils were encouraged to use the materials to examine the issues around racism and how to tackle it in our society. More than 1,300 youngsters so far have used the packs in lessons. Each school submitted three posters, poems or short stories to CLAS which selected one piece from each school to be entered in the national competition.

Representatives from a number of local schools will take part in Friday's event and presentation.