The subject, chosen by the students, was ‘Foreign nationals in the UK’, focusing on overseas students joining UK students as boarders.
After weeks of preparations, the girls were allocated different roles and tasks to do, ranging from filming and camera work, to helping with set design as well as being a presenter, interviewer and/or interviewees. The filming took place within school as well as using the boarding houses at the school as outside locations.
Pupils gained the knowledge of how news production is achieved on an actual BBC set, and not just what happens in front of the camera. They also found out more about how international students feel about being educated in England. It gave the girls an opportunity to understand boarders’ points of view and how different it is for people who come from overseas to use English as an additional language.
The finished news article has been uploaded onto the BBC School Report website as well as being available on the school’s website.
Emma, Year 7, said: “We all thoroughly enjoyed the productive experience and learnt a lot – as well as having a lot of fun.”
BBC News School Report gives 11-16 year old students the chance to make their own news reports for a real audience. Using lesson plans and materials from the BBC website, and with support from BBC staff and partners, staff help students develop their journalistic skills to become School Reporters. The event falls in line with the annual News Day and schools create video, audio and text-based news reports, publishing them on their school websites, to which the BBC aims to link. More than 1000 schools took part this year.
