A SPECIALLY-formed choir from Leasowes High School will perform at tomorrow’s memorial service in memory of fellow student Christina Edkins who was stabbed to death a year ago.

The 20-strong group will sing a hymn and two contemporary songs during the service at St Philip’s Cathedral, Birmingham.

The chamber choir first performed at the poignant unveiling of an engraved Yorkshire stone and memorial garden in the grounds of the Halesowen school last December.

Headteacher Neil Shaw, senior staff and Christina’s teachers, including her form tutor, and other students will be among the congregation.

Many of Christina’s classmates who left the school last summer to go on to sixth form colleges and other training places are expected to attend to mark the first anniversary of her death.

Mr Shaw said: “Tomorrow will be an incredibly difficult day for all concerned.”

The school will hold a minute’s silence and there will be informal laying of tributes at the stone memorial to Christina.

The front page of the school’s website will also carry a memorial to the popular 16-year-old who was preparing to sit her GCSEs when she was attacked on the number nine bus as she travelled to Leasowes along Hagley Road from her Birmingham home.

Christina died from a single wound to her chest in the random attack by paranoid schizophrenic Phillip Simelane on March 7 last year.

The indiscriminate killing of the innocent schoolgirl sent shockwaves around the country.

A West Midlands Police spokesman, speaking on behalf of her parents, Jason and Kathleen Edkins, said anyone who knew Christina was welcome to attend the service at 3pm.

The cathedral is also where her funeral was held two weeks after her shocking death.

Simelane, aged 22 at the time, from Walsall, admitted manslaughter at Birmingham Crown Court last October and was detained in a secure psychiatric hospital indefinitely.