A Birmingham ten-year-old beat off stiff competition to scoop third place in the national final of the Junior Language Challenge at Olympia, London.

Arpan Sharma, of The Blue Coat School, Edgbaston, had only a month to learn Swahili before joining 36 finalists in a competition that attracted almost 2,700 pupils. In a race against the clock, Arpan finished only one point behind the tied winning score after a nail-biting three rounds of computer-based tasks, narrowly missing out on the top prize of a trip to Tanzania.

Earlier in the competition, Arpan came joint first in a regional semi-final conducted in Thai, which qualified him for the London final.

Two of Blue Coat's other budding linguists - Connor Burns and Jessica Delaney-Hall - also won places in the semi-final, reaching the last 330 contestants by learning German.

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Now in its fourth year, the Junior Language Challenge aims to increase the profile of language learning in primary schools while raising more than £5,000 for the Starfish Programme, which supplies educational materials to Africa.

Arpan's success is a welcome endorsement of Blue Coat's innovative approach to language learning in which Spanish, German, Italian and French are taught as one-year programmes of study from aged seven.

Languages teacher Nicky Lambert-Green, whose own children are bilingual, said: "As well as offering a stimulating introduction to languages, we enable our children to make an informed choice of foreign languages when they move to their senior schools."

A multi-talented pupil, whose achievements include a place in the National Children's Orchestra, Arpan added: "Learning Swahili was one of the biggest challenges I've faced - and I'm really looking forward to learning Mandarin Chinese next. I was disappointed to be pipped at the post, but winning a DVD player was fantastic."

Well spoken: Language expert Arpan Sharma.