WE have narrowed it down – now it is up to you to pick the winners.

Today we are announcing the lucky finalists in our exciting £6,000 School Build Challenge.

The Daily Echo has teamed up with construction experts Leadbitter to offer three schools the chance to turn their outdoor projects into realities.

Entries poured in over the last two months, telling of dreams for everything from new play equipment to vegetable patches, and outdoor classrooms to bike sheds or nature hides and trails.

They have now been whittled down to the final 17, so now it is over to readers to decide which schools will win the three prizes, of works up to the value of £3,000, £2,000 and £1,000.

Daily Echo editor-in-chief Ian Murray and Leadbitter’s regional director Dave Cook, based at the firm’s Hedge End offices, had the difficult task of shortlisting the finalists.

Mr Murray said: “It was incredibly tough picking out the best entries – the standard of applications was truly excellent.

“Well done to all the worthy finalists, but thankfully we don’t have to try to pick a winner from them all.

“That’s now down to the Daily Echo readers, so make sure you send your tokens in for the projects you think most deserve to become a reality.”

Readers can vote for their favourite school by sending in the tokens that will be printed in the Daily Echo every day over the next three weeks.

Details of the 17 finalists are HERE, with details of the projects they want you to vote for, but we will also be featuring them in more detail in the days to come.

Bonus tokens can also be downloaded from our website at dailyecho.co.uk, and will appear in our free sister papers, the News Extra and Advertiser, and New Forest Post.

All the tokens received by the closing date on May 17 will be counted, and the winning school will be the one with the highest total, when it has been divided by the number of pupils they have.

CLICK HERE FOR FINALISTS