A man who introduced Japanese lessons to Devon has been honoured as secondary teacher of the year at an awards ceremony in London to highlight the best of the education sector.

The Teaching Awards are known as the Oscars of the industry and Crispin Chambers' foreign language lessons at Tavistock College, a comprehensive in the West Country, were highlighted for their capacity to be inspirational, achieve good results and build cultural links with Japan.

Mr Chambers' local mayor has already said that the teacher's achievements deserve a statue in the local area as thanks to the teacher's efforts, there are 1,200 pupils studying Japanese at the secondary school, making it one of the biggest Japanese departments in the country and Tavistock has annual exchange visits to Tokyo.

Back in the 90s, non-traditional foreign languages subjects such as Japanese and Chinese were restricted to the most able pupils in independent schools and Mr Chambers explained that nobody believed that Japanese would take off like it has done at his school.

He believes the ability to speak Japanese is a huge advantage, allowing pupils to study in the country and gain an edge over other job candidates in areas such as banking, medicine and law.

Mr Chambers's first learned to teach in Japan and said the country shows huge respect to teachers as it is seen as a "pleasure to study" in far eastern culture.

"Parents would thank you in the street for teaching their children," he commented, adding that the role of teaching in the UK should also be recognised for its importance to society.

There were 24,000 nominations for this year's Teaching Awards, with London teacher Anoria Simmons from Devonshire Hill Primary School, Weir Hall Road, Tottenham picking up the Teacher of the Year in a Primary School Award.

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