Belfast Boys Model School

Budding reporters from the school exercised their journalistic skills this week by conducting filmed interviews at Stormont with First Minister Reverend Ian Paisley MLA and Junior Minister Gerry Kelly OFMDFM, one of the ministers responsible for children and young people.

Under the guidance of their English teacher, Mrs. Louise Farr, the group of year 10 pupils prepared a list of probing questions which they then posed to the two politicians while two classmates filmed the interview.

The pupils involved were participating in BBC News School Report a national project which gives 11-14 year olds from UK schools the chance to engage students with broadcast journalism and make their own video, audio or text-based news at school and to broadcast it for real to a wide audience. With support from BBC staff, teachers help students develop their journalistic skills and become school reporters. The project will culminate on the 13th March when schools around the UK will take part in a News Day creating news reports and publishing them on their school websites.

‘’This has been a very rewarding and enjoyable experience for our pupils’’ comments Louise Farr, English teacher at Belfast Boys’ Model. ‘’News Report is a cross-curricular project which has been delivered through a range of school subjects including Citizenship, Learning for Life and Work, ICT as well as English. I think everyone involved very much enjoyed the opportunity to visit Stormont and interview the First Minister and Junior Minister and I think they both responded very well to the pupils’ questions.’’

Some of the varied topics covered in the interviews included questions on how the DUP and Sinn Fein have managed to work together, how they imagine Northern Ireland in 15 years time, their sporting interests and how they like to eat their cream eggs!

Both politicians confessed to enjoying the satirical television and radio show Folks On The Hill with Gerry Kelly confessing that he once mistook his own voice on the radio for his impersonator ‘’It’s certainly very accurate’’, he confessed. While the First Minister admitted ‘’I enjoy it. I know the man who does it and I have congratulated him for doing a good job. He knows a thing or two about politics.’’