22 April 2013 Last updated at 10:33

What is BBC News School Report?

Find out more about how the project works

BBC News School Report gives 11-16 year-old students in the UK the chance to make their own news reports for a real audience.

Using lesson plans and materials from this website, and with support from BBC staff and partners, teachers help students develop their journalistic skills to become School Reporters.

In March, schools take part in an annual News Day, simultaneously creating video, audio and text-based news reports, and publishing them on a school website, to which the BBC aims to link.

School Reporters produced a stunning array of content on March 21 2013, with more than 1,000 schools across the UK making the news on the biggest ever School Report News Day.

The next News Day will be held on 27 March 2014.

BBC News presenter and former teacher Huw Edwards is working on School Report.

He said: "Over the years I've run many journalism workshops in schools. So I've seen how much fun it can be and how much can be learnt when there are real deadlines, real audiences and real standards to meet.

"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.

Huw Edwards is the main presenter of the News at 10

"So have a go, let me know what you think, and good luck!"

How does it work in practice?

There are five steps for teachers to take, and the sooner you complete them, the sooner we can work with you:

1. Join our mailing list to receive emails about School Report 2013-14. You only need to complete this stage once to be on our database, so if you are already receiving emails from us you don't need to fill in this form again.
2. Return the Head Teacher Partnership Agreement (Form 1) as soon as possible to tell us that you are taking part in the project. This entitles you to:
3. Return the Head Teacher Confirmation of Consent (Form 2) when you have obtained individual consents for your students creating or contributing to School Report content.
4. Prepare a dedicated web page for your students' news on your school website, and send us the link. We will then link to it from the School Report map.
5. News Day! Arrange for a news-making activity to take place in your school on 27 March 2014.

Practice News Days

As well as the main News Day in March, there are also opportunities to join in a Practice News Day - a chance to rehearse what you will do on the March News Day.

Dates for future Practice News Days will be announced in the 2013-14 autumn term.

You can check out what went on in schools all around the UK in one of our live pages from the 2012-13 academic year for an idea of the sort of stories that schools cover.

You can hold your own Practice News Day on a date of your choosing, but one advantage of taking part on one a central dates is that your school will be featured on the School Report website.

Public service

The BBC runs School Report so that young people from across the UK have the chance to make their own news to real deadlines and broadcast it to real audiences.

This is because the BBC's first public purpose under its Charter is to "sustain citizenship and civil society", in part by providing an impartial news service for all.

School Report helps fulfil this in three ways:

• By engaging young people with news

• By bringing their voices and stories to a wider audience

• By sharing some of the public service values behind content creation, such as fairness, accuracy, and impartiality since so many young people are content creators and distributors.

Child protection

The safety and well-being of young people taking part in the project is very important to everyone involved in School Report. All mentors and other people working with School Report sign a personal disclosure form and undertake training in accordance with the BBC's guidelines on child protection.

We also have protection measures in place to prevent identification of children, including not using surnames and requiring parental consent for all children taking part.

Further information

To find our more about the project, please visit the Frequently Asked Questions page.