School Report

BBC School Report is proving to be a popular annual event here in Cornwall. Among the schools that have taken part in recent years include Poltair School in St Austell, and Sir James Smith's School in Camelford.

The latter has signed up to take part in the news day again, along with Helston School. Each school has a BBC mentor, Helston has BBC Radio Cornwall's Hannah Stacey and Sir James Smith's has BBC Spotlight's Louise Walter.

BBC School Report

Each school has to produce either a radio news bulletin, local website news, or a television broadcast, in just one day!

A few days before both the schools will have a trial news day, working alongside their teachers and BBC Mentor.

For Helston's students it's their first year as BBC School reporters. As a specialist technology college it's well equipped to run its own newsroom for the BBC School Report Day on Thursday 26 March 2009.

Ten students from year nine have been giving up some of their lunch hours to make plans for the big day. They've been using the online lesson plan on the main BBC School Report website and thinking about what stories are important where they live. 

Huw Edwards supports School Report

With the high profile emergency aid charity 'Shelterbox' just a stone's throw away from their classrooms, the news team is planning to do a special report on it's latest humanitarian missions. And one of their intrepid reporters has already been gathering information at a recent Shelterbox drill and demo day staged at RNAS Culdrose. 

Helping the students prepare for the big day is geography teacher Penny Laban who's keen to demonstrate how the subject is relevant in every day news stories. Penny says the school report news team are excited at the prospect of broadcasting their own news bulletin.

The school's media technician will be on hand to help with the editing and Helston's news team is raring to go. When the deadline arrives at 2pm on Thursday 26 March they hope to publish their TV news bulletin on the school's website.