BBC News School Report 2007/2008: An Independent Evaluative Review

This 64-page evaluation report reviews the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC)'s media literacy initiative called "School Report", which gives 11-14 year-old students in the United Kingdom (UK) an opportunity to create their own news reports for actual broadcast. Don Passey here looks specifically at the project as it ran in the northwest of England, in the 2007 to 2008 school year. In 2008, 52 schools in 12 local authorities were involved across the north-west, with 45 of those schools and 625 students being supported by 11 City Learning Centres (CLCs).

This information and communication technology (ICT)-based educational project involves creating linkages between the news media and academic institutions, to the end of helping develop news reporting practice with groups of young students. Participatory, interactive classroom activities are designed to help students use props such as real news photographs printed from online news sources (or from printed newspapers, magazines, etc.) to develop a news story and then to create a schedule, or a "running order" for a news programme. Following involvement in these lessons, student groups engage in practice news days throughout the autumn and spring terms in their schools (or a local CLC), working in groups to plan and anticipate problems that may arise during annual March event - "News Day" - on which their productions will appear in venues including television, radio, online, mobile telephone, and print.

Methods adopted to gather evidence to inform the aims of the evaluation included: a review of the BBC News School Report website; observations at a CLC on News Day; discussions on the day with some students, teachers, a CLC manager, support staff, and a BBC mentor; visits to schools and CLCs to interview students, teachers, CLC managers, and support staff; visits to BBC Manchester to interview key personnel and mentors; and questionnaires distributed by the BBC for teachers, CLC managers, and mentors to complete online.

According to Passey, the most frequent topics selected for news reports by students were: safety and comfort; education and school issues; health; sports; entertainment; current news stories about individuals; and citizenship, finance, and current affairs issues. He notes that teachers felt that the topics chosen by students were "often highly appropriate, and that students could display creativity when they worked on these stories." He affirms that "[i]t is unlikely that there is any other channel through which students would be able to offer ideas, views and perspectives on this range of highly relevant and important topics to reach wide audiences."

Analysing the News Day event itself, Passey contends that the theme of inclusion that informed the design of the project was reflected in participating schools' and CLCs' emphasis on the abilities of student groups to work effectively together. Specifically, "[w]ide educational gains were reported by teachers. Educational gains covered communication and operational skills, group work and team work approaches, ownership and independent learning, technical skills, confidence, interest, and the meeting of deadlines. Aspirations for some students were reported to have changed, and professionalism was seen as a positive spur for some students....Inclusion was a strong feature recognised within student groups. Their abilities to work effectively together, largely irrespective of individual composition, appeared to be fuelled by the importance of deadlines and the demands for high-level standards associated with outcomes of the activity....Learning outcomes were identifiable in terms of empowering the individual in terms of capability rather than being knowledge-based alone..."

The vast majority of the teachers indicated that they would like to run the project again next year. One element impacting future expansion of School Report, which Passey highlights here, is the importance of partnership. For instance, he found that CLCs provided "important links and liaison that could not be undertaken by a BBC team without further levels of investment." Also, even though BBC mentor time was found to not always work well with all schools, there is a need to maintain the level of involvement (e.g., because these mentors often spotted needs within the school that teachers, acting as facilitators, may have been too "close" to the situation to have perceived).