Beverley Knight visits her old school in Wolverhampton

The singer visited Woodfield Junior and Infant Schools before heading to look around the new facilities at Highfields Science Specialist School in Penn, Wolverhampton.

The visit came just weeks before the star begins rehearsals for her lead role in a West End production of The Bodyguard later this year.

Beverley, originally from Penn Fields, made the trip to ensure she had seen the pupils at Woodfield before its centenary year begins in September.

Highfields has meanwhile been rebuilt as part of the Government's £270 million Building Schools for The Future programme which has seen every school in Wolverhampton rebuilt or refurbished. Highfields benefited from a £44m slice of that funding and opened to students last September.

At Woodfield Infants, Beverley judged a competition held between different classes to design the best banner representing a different country of the world. That was before waving off a parade of youngsters who set off down the Penn Road carrying the banners. The pupils who designed the Dominican Republic sign were so happy they crowded around the singer to give her a group hug. She also toured Woodfield Juniors, where she visited all the pupils and each class asked her questions.

Beverley even told pupils of her most embarrassing moment on stage – when she stood on the bottom of a very baggy pair of trousers in the middle of singing the narrator's opening song of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat as a Highfields pupils and fell over.

She said: "I was almost in tears at some points seeing all the old classrooms. The questions pupils asked were so good, and they showed such an interest."

Woodfield Junior's deputy headteacher Heidi Perrett said: "It has been really quite tear jerking seeing Beverley being so moved by her memories."