A Sidmouth teacher is pulling on his trainers to take on the London Marathon this weekend to support one of his pupils, who is undergoing cancer treatment.

James Ingham-Hill, vice-principal of Sidmouth College, will be among the thousands of people taking on the 26.2-mile course on Sunday to raise money and awareness for CLIC Sargent.

The teacher has raised more than £1,500 of his £2,000 target for the charity, which has supported pupil Harvey Slater.

The youngster was diagnosed with T-cell acute lymphoblastic lymphoma after collapsing at home in February last year.

He was taken by blue-lit ambulance to Bristol Children’s Hospital, where staff operated on him because the 10cm tumour in his neck was cutting off the blood supply to his brain.

“After a night in A&E we were told the heart wrenching news that he had cancer,” his family said in a statement, “something a parent never wants to hear. Our lives had just been turned upside down. We are now a year into Harvey’s cancer journey and very fortunate that Harvey has responded well to treatment and after being absent from school for 10 months is now starting to make his way back into lessons.

“Harvey’s treatment is long and hard and he still has another two years and four months of treatment to go but hopefully we have left the worse long behind us now.

“He still has to have chemotherapy once a month and is permanently on chemotherapy tablets, as well as having lumbar punctures and steroids.

“Up to now he has had over 70 infusions of chemotherapy.”

During Harvey’s treatment, his family have been supported by CLIC Sargent nurses who visit every week to save him having to travel to hospital.

Harvey’s family added: “CLIC Sargent help provide financial aid for petrol and food after initial diagnosis as it costs on average an extra £600 a month to have a child with cancer. This is due to travelling costs, car parking charges, extra food, hotel stays, heating at home and many other things. CLIC Sargent also helped us with welfare forms and sorting out everything we needed to do in order to let all the relevant people know that Harvey was ill. They were and still are our support.”

Visit www.justgiving.com/fundraising/James-Ingham-Hill to donate.