Young newshounds from Sacred Heart RC School in Redcar have been reporting on the news – and now they are making it as well! For the year eight pupils have been named 11-14 age-group winners of the inaugural national CES Just News competition, for which they spent a day writing, designing and producing a 12-page newspaper.
The prize for their efforts was a £1,000 donation to CAFOD to support their work with young people in Sierra Leone and Liberia, and £250 for the school to use for purposes related to Catholic social teaching. The presentation was made by Archbishop Vincent Nichols in a special ceremony at the Houses of Parliament.
Just News encourages students in Catholic schools and colleges to investigate themes of social justice, peace and development as well as reporting the main news of the day. It was run in conjunction with Newsday, the national competition organised by the Times Educational Supplement, which has been going for nearly 20 years.
The school’s newsroom was made up of editor Chris Parker plus Eloise Lombard, Callum Jowsey, Olivia Wood, Katie Pearson, Daniel Cook, Bethany McQuade, Ben Pearson, Tom Cox, Hannah Cook with teachers Debbie Neal, Mark Rathbone and Josh Hukin overseeing their work. They put together a full-colour paper – titled News at Heart – containing international, national and local news plus sports articles and features.
Members of the news team interviewed Middlesbrough FC and England Under-21 footballer Andrew Taylor and former world speedway champion Gary Havelock of the Redcar Bears, and even broke the exclusive story that local rock band Station Road, who were formed by ex-Sacred Heart students, had broken up. They also tackled environmental issues and, in editor Chris’s leader column, looked at how the day’s national news could impact on their own lives. They took their own photographs too, and designed pages in the school’s computer suite.
‘We didn’t expect to come to the Houses of Parliament,’ said editor Chris. ‘It was great to be able to help people through CAFOD – our day off school means that other teenagers can go to school.’