IF you found out a penalty kick was worth �250,000, you’d think it had been scored in the money-rich world of Premier League football.

You wouldn’t think it had been fired in by a boy at a Potters Bar school.

But that’s exactly what happened when James Gallagher, headboy at Lochinver House School, knocked the ball past the reach of his sprawling deputy headteacher, Antony Tyndale.

For the pound raised for scoring that spot kick during a charity penalty shootout saw the school reach a �250,000 landmark, since the headboys took on charity fundraising efforts 14 years ago.

A spokeswoman for the Heath Road school said: “From that first year in 1997 when just over �5,000 was raised to last year when over �27,000 was distributed among the charities, the headboys, house-captains and vice house-captains, their parents, the teachers and all the boys have worked tirelessly to make the lives of those less fortunate than theirs just that little bit better.”

At the start of each academic year, all pupils vote as to which charities the school should support, following presentations made to them by the headboys.

This year’s chosen charities are the NSPCC, Help for Heroes, and The PSP Association, which is dedicated to supporting people with Progressive Supranuclear Palsy.