THE wizards and magic of Harry Potter may have helped Lydiard Park Academy to break a Guinness World Record.

The school joined 75 others schools around the country in trying to break a Guinness World Record (GWR) of having the world’s largest simultaneous reading lesson.

The event was set up by the organisers of National Book Day and schools across the country were selected right across the country to take part at precisely 9am yesterday morning.

The academy school accepted the invitation and had 55 pupils from year nine between the ages13 and 14 taking part in the lesson.

As part of the attempt it meant all schools had to read Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows chapter one at the same time.

Lydiard Park Academy successfully managed to complete their end of the record and now they wait for the attempt to be verified.

The attempt had to last for a minimum of 30 minutes, with a loud start at the beginning and end, while the stewards at the event had to keep the time to the exact second.

Evidence of the morning was sent to GWR team for them to verify the attempt by all the different participants’ schools.

Literature co-ordinator at Lydiard Park Academy Donna Harris said: “I have recently just joined the position at the beginning of this academic year and all the staff agree that reading is so important. We chose to do the record because we want to promote reading and hopefully get pupils to want to take up reading in their own time and read regularly for pleasure.

“It was a great opportunity and it was great fun. The students and staff loved the chance to take part in an attempt at breaking a world record. It is not something everyone can say they have achieved so I guess that makes it extra special that together we may have done that.”

Each participating school had rules they had to stick by, including having a minimum of 50 participants per venue, a venue needed to be allocated from 09:00 till 09:30am, one steward per 50 participants and two witness statements. A big screen also has to be available for the video and script for reading and five photos and one video of 60 seconds had to be taking for evidence.

The current world record is set at 3,509 people and hopefully in 21 days the schools across the country will get the confirmation that they have the new world record.