Last night we held our fifth annual Burnet News Club Awards Ceremony at The Queen’s Gallery, Buckingham Palace.
Tom Standage, the deputy editor of The Economist, spoke at the event about the importance of developing news literacy before awarding ten pupils from schools across the country with certificates to recognise their outstanding contributions to the Burnet News Club online hub.
“It’s incredible to have the opportunity to come to such an historic building in the United Kingdom. I am just honoured to even step foot in the building and it has just been amazing the whole year and I’d like to thank everyone. I feel amazing – really excited for the award.”
Logan, aged 10
A few of the young people had a chance to share some of the work they had created during the year. These included a letter to a local MP outlining options to deal with the social housing crisis in the community, a poem about veganism and a thoughtful piece on the use of the word fireman vs. firefighter.
“I was really excited. My teacher told me at the beginning of the year that if we did really good work we would get to go to Buckingham Palace and at first I thought ‘yeah yeah’ but when the invitation came through in the post I was staring at it. I didn’t believe it. It was really incredible. I’m really proud that I am here.”
Jessica, aged 10
Sir Evelyn de Rothschild, a key supporter of the BNC, awarded the overall 2018 BNC Award to Michael Faraday School in London, who have been part of the BNC for two years.
Schools Relationship Manager Olivia Platman said: “Throughout the year Michael Faraday have been regularly entering competitions, making thoughtful posts and engaging with the experts, other young people and us.”
Diane Rougvie-Fevrier from St Gregory’s Primary School won the award for the teacher who had shown outstanding commitment to running and developing their club, and whose club made exceptional progress over the year.
As well as presenting awards, we launched our all-new Burnet News Club online Hub. The new platform will give young people their own profiles where they can see their skills progress and even more easily take part in discussions with other students and topic experts. It’s the only platform of its kind, facilitating in-depth, open discussions about current affairs between young people all over the UK with input from experts and a focus on critical thinking skills. The new Hub will go live in September when schools start back.
We’d like to thank the Queen’s Gallery for offering such a fantastic location to host the event.
