The schools’ year eight students swept to victory in Word Mania 2016, an online word building contest testing player’s knowledge of phonics, suffixes and prefixes, spelling, word recognition, vocabulary and word knowledge.

More than 260,000 students from 2000 Australian schools took part in the competition, building more than 63 million words.

Teacher Caitlin Butler said the students were not shy about having a go.

“They really got into the competition and when they knew they were in with a chance (of victory) they put the hours in,” she said.

Perhaps none put more hours in than Mitchell Graham, who won the school’s award for most determined Word Mania player.

He spent up to two hours a day playing Word Mania to help get his school over the line.

“Spelling is one of the things I like about English class,” he said.

Adam McArther, whose company LiteracyPlanet organised the competition, said students should be proud of their achievement.

“Word building is a complex skill, and with so many schools involved there were tens of thousands of students competing for the top spot in each year level. That’s a lot of competition,” he said.