The revived competition, last held in November 1993, is the premier award for writers of non-fiction books for young people and school textbooks. This year The TES introduced a new award for the best mixed media resources. The idea was to reflect the growing range of technologies available to publishers and schools to use in classrooms. .

The Citizenship Foundation’s Young citizen’s passport, a user-friendly pocket-sized guide to the law for young people, was joint winner of the senior information book award.

The other winner was Keeping clean: a very peculiar history written by Daisy Kerr and published by Watts. The book illustrates how two of life’s everyday activities were carried out in settings which range from King Minos’s palace to Skylab. The judges described it as “jovial but never sniggering”.

Children Just Like Me by Barnabas and Anabel Kindersley won the junior award. Published by DK in association with UNICEF, the book is a celebratory set of interviews with young people in 36 countries. “It’s a fizzing antidote to the futile generalities of an inspection report; it’s about children as they are,” said the judges.

Mr and Mrs Kindersley gave their prize of Pounds 500 to UNICEF.

The schoolbook award for secondary science went to veteran author, Don Mackean for GCSE Biology, published by John Murray (see story right). The primary science award was won by Dougal Dixon for his book on dinosaurs in the Ladybird Discovery series.

The Music Show from Channel 4 “sings out for appreciation” and was the “obvious and outstanding winner” of the primary resources award, according to the judges. But they were less impressed with the entries in the secondary category. Instead of awarding a full prize they decided to commend highly a package combining print, video and computer software, Food - a fact of life from the British Nutritional Foundation.