Junior high making the news

Today (Thursday) 40 pupils from Lurgan Junior High School will be joining up with around 700 schools across the UK making the news.

The pupils are taking part in BBC News School Report, a BBC project to engage 11-14-year-olds in the news.

Ex-teacher and BBC News presenter, Huw Edwards, is lending his support to the project.

He said: “I'm involved because I want to give young people the chance to make the news themselves, and I want to share the principles of good journalism.”

Over the past few months the students in Year 9 have been working hard, training to be top journalists, carrying out interviews and producing reports.

The school's Head of English said BBC School Report had been a highly valuable educational and rewarding experience for pupils and teachers – a super insight into the world of news and journalism. Today at 2pm the students will be broadcasting their news, covering the stories of the day as well as their special report on the 2nd Battalion of the Royal Irish return to Afghanistan.

Athena, one of their reporters, said: “School report has been brilliant and one of the most exciting things I have ever done!”

This year schools are also attempting to set the World Record for the Largest Interactive Weather Report. To help with this, pupils from the school will be taking the temperature at 9.15am and submitting it to BBC Weather who will be compiling it into a weather report.

You can find more reports from School Reporters on the BBC website www.bbc.co.uk/schoolreport