1. More than 1,000 schools took part in the ninth annual School Report News Day on March 19th 2015
2. School Reporters had to finish their stories by a 14:00 GMT deadline - and get them online by 16:00

THE STORY

At RFHCS pupils in our Day School were lucky enough to work closely with a mentor from the BBC. They decided on the focus for the report after discussing a news article linking the recent recession with the current rise in hospital admissions relating to child and adolescent mental health.

The pupils, many of them facing similar challenges of their own, were keen to explore this idea in more detail by interviewing mental health professionals and also the charity 'Young Minds' to see if either could provide them with further insight into the issue.

The final report was assembled with lots of support from Sarika Unadkat, a BroadCast Assistant and later a Senior Producer at News Report, Zoe Millett.

Contributors included Alison Cantle (Child and Adolescent Psychotherapist) and Petra and Stella (from Young Minds).  

The pupils took real ownership over the project and gained a genuine knowledge and understanding of the various roles involved in producing a convincing news report.

Please find the finished report attached below...

THE FEEDBACK

The pupils were lucky enough to have an edited version of their report featured on BBC Radio 4!

"Hi Melissa,

Attached is your audio clip that went out on the World at One today – we’ve had some very lovely feedback from the senior editor on the programme who was saying how brilliant the content was!

Personally, I am also so glad that this has gone out on air and that we were able to get the students’ story to life. When I first came in, it was so obvious to see how passionate they were about that story – it was a hugely sensitive topic and they covered it brilliantly well. Mental health is a sensitive topic for any professional journalist to cover and what was great about the piece they made is that they covered it with a passion and realness that made the story very powerful.

It’s been amazing to work with the students and see their journey from helping their initial ideas to develop into a story. I thoroughly enjoyed working with them, they had the perfect attitude to recording and you could really see them grow in confidence as the recording went on.

I hope they are hugely proud of what they have achieved.

And last but not least, thank you as well for helping to arrange this and make the time to put it all together!"

Sarika Unadkat
BroadCast Assistant