For the second year running, a group of Year 8 Students have been involved in the BBC School News Report. Students have been learning the skills required to become journalists; closely monitoring the news; looking for stories to cover; filming and editing them. Once again, it has proved a really exciting project but not without its stresses and frustrations.

Initially, two of our intrepid journalists were chasing the story of Scarborough’s Futurist theatre. They hoped to interview The Chuckle Brothers and having contacted the theatre, were expecting a call from their agent; unfortunately, it never came and our students were left disappointed. However, they proved their ability to be flexible and soon managed to secure a new story on graffiti.

The students have been covering a range of stories and have managed to secure interviews with a number of people, including Mrs Milne’s mum, live from Madeira, for a story on the recent floods that have devastated the island. Again, PC Nicholson, our local Police Officer, has been involved. He has not only provided an interview for the students covering the graffiti story, but he has also verified our involvement in a Guinness World Record attempt for the largest interactive weather report – all exciting stuff!

Today is the BIG DAY! Nationally, over 600 schools are currently busy gathering their live stories to add to their pre-recorded bulletins. Sarah, Robyn and Rebecca are covering the story of Bryan Berg who has built a replica of the Venetian Macao hotel out of 218, 792 playing cards whilst Joanna and Hannah have been interviewing our Year 11 P.E. students involved in their final practical assessments.

The students are beginning to feel the pressure as we near the 2pm deadline and begin their live recording. Again, there have been problems with our weather recording. Unlike last year however, the problem wasn’t technical but the fact that the sun was shining too brightly which meant it was impossible to film! As expected, two students under the greatest pressure are Callum, our technical specialist, who is frantically setting up the studio and checking the equipment, and Chief Editor Alex, who is responsible for checking the bulletins, deciding on the stories' running order and making the difficult decision over which stories need to be axed. Again, Fay Yeomans from BBC Radio York has proved an invaluable support throughout the project and although there is no bus this year, she has brought her mobile Comrex so we can broadcast live from Room 6 into Russell Walker’s mid -morning show. Throughout the day, they are following the team's progress, interviewing live on air, the students and various staff.