Bradford College

Student Success at BBC

Earlier this year student teachers from Bradford College helped to create breaking news stories for the BBC.  Taking part in the BBC News School Report Day to simultaneously create video, audio and text-based news reports published on the web.

The student teachers have been working with young people from three schools in Bradford to help them produce news stories and develop their journalistic skills.  The students and young people were inspired after a V.I.P visit in January to the BBC Broadcasting Centre in Leeds. The aim of the visit was to launch the challenge and to watch Look North being broadcast live on air.

Following the success of the visit to the BBC, the student teachers and pupils involved in the project went on to make the news on BBC School Report Day.  Pupils were then given the responsibility of deciding which stories to run with, under the broad theme of ‘Putting Bradford on the map.’ The news stories have now been published on the web, along with material from dozens of schools from around the country, including other schools in Bradford who also signed up for the challenge.

The involvement of student teachers by Bradford College is supported by the Teacher and Development Agency for schools and aims to encourage teachers to use technology in the classroom. The student teachers involved in the project each received special journalism training from BBC video journalists.

Clive Opie, Assistant Director at Bradford College commenting on the success of the programme and the BBC News School Report Day said: “I think its been absolutely brilliant from an educational point of view.  The standard of work produced by the pupils has been outstanding. There’s also been lots of hard work from staff from various schools pulling it all together – its been phenomenal.”  Clive continued: “I walked in on Report Day and I wouldn’t have known I wasn’t in the BBC newsroom. The pupils were acting as journalists, sorting out the storylines, working out what information they needed, what was going to make the headlines – it was absolutely amazing!”

Bradford College ITC Lecturer, Clare Wolfenden explained:  “There were 16 pupils that took part from three different schools.  We produced six stories altogether on the day. Three stories had been pre-made. News topics included: The Canabis Culture, SATS – To test or not to test?, Deforestation, The Bradford Film Festival, After hours at Dixons City Academy and an interview with Simon Beaufoy, Slumdog Millionaire screenwriter.  These stories were written from the pupils’ perspectives and not from a teacher’s perspective or from any authority trying to tell the young people a message, which to be honest they are often a bit tired of hearing.  That’s why the pupils in the schools were actually blown away by the finished footage.  It was young people telling other young people – this is what it’s really like.  Using their language, using their interpretation of what’s really going on in their town.”

During the day no time was scheduled for lunch or breaks, pupils had a working lunch with food provided.  Clare explained: “The pupils took complete control of the day, telling us what transport they needed, where they wanted to go and how long they’d be.  They also took video cameras, microphones, wrote their own scripts, decided on their own stories and did their own research. We didn’t tell them what to do at all.  They were in complete control.  It really was like being in a newsroom.  People were running around directing orders at each other and having group meetings to discuss the news items.”

Clive went on to outline a specific example where a pupil used his resourcefulness to complete the assignment:  “On the day in question, there was a story running in the national press about SATS and whether they’d be continued.   The pupils thought this was an excellent story to run with.  My ITC students needed to get a primary head teacher to talk to them; they tried but they couldn’t.  One of the pupils, Samuel took the initiative and phoned his old primary head teacher.  Before you knew it we were in a taxi on the way to interview the headmaster, accompanied by myself and student teachers from Bradford College. The interview was conducted at 11 O’clock and it was brought back into the school to be edited.  The finished news item was delivered on time by the deadline of 2 O’clock and is now on the web.”

Clive continued: “This demonstrated to me the quality of skills that these pupils have got.  These are the skills that will last them a lifetime. I was so impressed at what those pupils were doing, their conversational skills, the group activities and their resourcefulness.”

Clare added: “Normally as a teacher in a classroom you often have to work hard to keep the pupils motivated, but not on this day. In fact it was the complete opposite, they were like ‘Come on Miss, you haven’t done this yet!’ or ‘I need this filmed now!’ It was all very exciting.  The buzz and the atmosphere on the day are hard to describe – it was just fantastic!  All the skills the pupils had learnt up to that day had suddenly been put into practice.”

When asked what Clare felt the pupils had gained from the experience, she said:  They’ve learnt to use specific software packages, got training on how to write the stories, how to network, how to make appointments, how to research and how to work under pressure.  They also had to work across three schools, work with people they’d never met before, get along with their peers, do group work and communicate with each other.  As well as work cross culturally, cross gender, cross age barriers, cross schools. I think this is almost more significant than the skills they learnt for journalism. They’re transferable skills that can be taken and applied to whatever job they do.  The pupils found it very satisfying, in terms of confidence building and just this ‘anything is possible’ kind of attitude that they developed as a result of the experience.

Clare remarked: “Normally if you’re a pupil in a school, you can spend months completing course work.  This had to be done in a day. From deciding what the story was, to going out and doing the filming, to coming back and putting it together and having it ready by a deadline on that day.  All of us were surprised how well it went, what we’d actually achieved and the quality of what was produced!”

Clare added: “I think it’s important to recognise the contributions the TDA have made.  Without their support our trainees couldn’t have been involved in the project.  The experience has been very valuable for them.  They’ll be able to go out to schools and continue it year after year.”

Clare continued: “One of the most important factors about the project is that we’ve had three schools working together in collaboration. That’s because we have trainee teachers based in each of the schools, which has made it really easy to pull the three schools together. We had the full support of each school involved. That’s quite a unique factor! All of the other schools involved with the BBC did this individually. Ours was the only one that did this collaboratively.” 

Following the success of the BBC School Report Day a formal presentation ceremony took place to mark the achievements of the students  and pupils involved in the event.  Each pupil was presented with a certificate. Clare said: “It was a celebration and evaluation of the day.  We also watched the news footage created and the pupils really enjoyed it. It was a great success. Clare added: I think 99% of the pupils wanted to pursue a career in the media after the experience.”

To find out more about the students teachers V.I.P visit to the BBC earlier this year click here….

To take a look at the news stories created through the BBC School Report Day click here