School Report

On Monday 23 March Pupils from Helston Community College came into the studios at BBC Radio Cornwall to record a live interview with BBC News presenter and journalist Huw Edwards.

Martin Bailie and Hannah Stacey give a talk.

The four pupils; Kaitlin, Lauren, Richard and Sophie wrote their own questions with help from their teacher Penny Laban and had a ten minute slot to ask Huw anything they wanted to put together a special recording.

They were also given a tour of BBC Radio Cornwall and shown how to operate a studio.

The interview with Hugh went well with the students asking a range of questions, quizzing him about his job and asking for top tips ahead of the day they run their own news room.

When asked if anyone had ever intimidated him during an interview Huw confessed that Margaret Thatcher was a bit of an iron lady and that the current Prime Minister Gordon Brown was quite a force to be reckoned with. 

The School report is a BBC Scheme where schools take part in an annual News Day, simultaneously creating video, audio and text-based news reports.

Two of the students get ready to record.

For the Helston 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.