About

BBC News School Report gives 11-14 year-old students in the UK the chance to make their own news reports for a real audience.

Using lesson plans and materials from this website, and with support from BBC staff, teachers help students develop their journalistic skills to become School Reporters.

On 11 March 2010, schools take part in a News Day, simultaneously creating video, audio and text-based news reports, and publishing them on a school website, to which the BBC aims to link.

During News Day 2009 students and their work featured on News 24, Breakfast News, the One O’clock and Six O’clock News, Newsround, Radio Five Live, Radio 4, 40 local radio stations, 12 regional TV stations, BBC Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, and many local and national BBC websites.

The School Report website also became a TV channel and a radio station streaming pupils’ news reports and coverage of school-based activities throughout the school day. It was also available on the BBC’s red button service.

The BBC aim to create a similar event which gives students a voice and a real audience on 11 March 2010.

BBC News presenter and former teacher, Huw Edwards, is working on School Report.

He said: “Over the years I’ve run many journalism workshops in schools. So I’ve seen how much fun it can be and how much can be learnt when there are real deadlines, real audiences and real standards to meet.

“I’m involved because I want to give young people the chance to make the news themselves, and I want to share the principles of good journalism.

“So have a go, let me know what you think, and good luck!”

The BBC runs School Report so that young people from across the UK have the chance to make their own news to real deadlines and broadcast it to real audiences.

This is because the BBC’s first public purpose under its Charter is to “sustain citizenship and civil society”, in part by providing an impartial news service for all.

School Report helps fulfil this in three ways:

• By engaging young people with news

• By bringing their voices and stories to a wider audience

• By sharing some of the public service values behind content creation, such as fairness, accuracy, and impartiality since so many young people are content creators and distributors.