In a bid to raise money for the new donkey sanctuary in Newmills, a charity initiative by the St Mary’s Primary School in Roughan ended up with almost 90 pupil suspensions after a competition to describe Arlene Foster in just one word witnessed some dubious entries. 

Foster, who received criticism for her one-word association game with the Sunday Independent to describe a fellow Stormont politician, was going to be asked to present the winning entry with a cheque for £10 and a Wispa bar.

Roughan staff called a halt to the competition after reading just 100 entries, 87 of them too obscene to go to print. Headmaster John Adams admitted he didn’t foresee the dubious quality of  adjectives to describe the First Minister:

“It was rough. The first few were bad enough – ‘ballax’ etc – but then it started to get x-rated. I had no idea the P1s had such an extensive and colourful vocabulary. I’ve a fair idea some of the parents got involved in the process and maybe manipulated some of the entries. We had to suspend 87 pupils and just burned the remaining entries because Mrs Hilton kept fainting.”

Roughan confirmed that the £200 raised so far by the competition for the donkey sanctuary will still reach its intended destination, but that there will be a new ‘Acceptable Language’ policy drawn up immediately by the Board of Governors.

It has since emerged that over 10 votes were spoiled by entries using two words to describe Foster. Principal Adams reiterated that ‘effin’ is not an acceptable word anyway.