What is BBC News School Report?

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.

Huw Edwards

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.

In March, schools take part in an annual 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.

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!"

How does it work in practice?

There are five steps for teachers to take:

1. Register your interest online to receive regular emails about the project.

2. Return an agreement form to be eligible for support from a School Report mentor, if we are able to match you with a BBC member of staff.

3. Return a consent form for students to be eligible to appear on the BBC, which includes being featured during practice News Days .

4. Prepare a dedicated web page for your students' news on your school website to receive a link from the School Report map .

5. Arrange for a news-making activity to take place on 11 March 2010 and for your students' news to be uploaded to your dedicated page by 1600 GMT.

Teachers are encouraged to complete steps 1-4 as soon as possible, in order to make the most of the project. Once the two forms have been returned and a dedicated web page created, pupils will have real audience for their work it by virtue of a link from this website.

Public service

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.

Further information

To find our more about the project, please visit the frequently asked questions page and watch one of these two explanatory videos; one which lasts eight minutes and the other which last two minutes.