Burnet News Club Awards Ceremony 2020

02 July 2020

On July 2nd, we held our seventh annual Burnet News Club Awards Ceremony... this year, the event went online

The ceremony was a little different this year. Usually, we celebrate the work of the teachers and students in the Burnet News Club at Buckingham Palace. This year, due to the COVID-19 restrictions, we took the festivities online and hosted a virtual ceremony instead. Awards were presented to sixteen outstanding students, and we announced the teacher of the year and the overall winning school.

What a year of achievement for schools in the Burnet News Club! From inspiring posts, to thoughtful comments, to inventive competition entries to smart questions to experts - we have been blown away by the student contributions, supported so expertly by your magnificent teachers!

Tom Bigglestone, School Relationships Manager at The Economist Educational Foundation

This academic year, students have explored topics ranging from the crisis in Hong Kong and the future of the NHS to politicians and power and space travel. A few students in the club were able to share their experiences and favourite things about the BNC. Plus, we were joined by Achimota Basic School in Ghana who took part in this year's Global Conversation and were awarded the Thought Leader for Issue 5!

We’d like to thank Broadsword for supporting us with the tech to run the event.

AWARD WINNERS

BURNET NEWS CLUB SCHOOL AWARD

HAMMOND JUNIOR SCHOOL

The Burnet News Club award goes to the club that brought the most valuable contributions to the Hub over the year. This year, the award was given to Hammond Junior School who are new members to the club. Despite this, they have had a very successful year, with six classes taking part! Not only are lots of students fully engaged online, they are consistently brilliant on the Hub and provide lots of excellent comments, posts and final pieces - even when school was closed. Their wealth of stars from every class shows that they are worthy winners and we look forward to seeing how their club develops in the future!

TEACHER OF THE YEAR AWARD

HAMDA SHEIKH, PRESTON MANOR SCHOOL

Thank you so much for this award of teacher of the year 2019-2020. I wasn’t expecting it at all and I’m so grateful for it. This is my school’s first year running the BNC and it has been such a great experience. Our club runs at the unenviable time of 3.30 to 4.30pm on a Friday, but it is truly a highlight of my week. My students have turned up week after week with such enthusiasm and thirst to get stuck into the new content. They have grown so much: the ability to really listen to each other and challenge one another, displaying all those BNC skills of scepticism (probably the skill they've most gleefully taken to), reasoning, speaking out and open-mindedness. None of this growth would have been possible without the amazing resources and support provided by the BNC team. You’ve made it so easy and such a joy to run this club, so I would like to take this opportunity to say a massive thank you to the BNC team for all their hard work and support. I appreciate it so much and I can’t wait for year 2 of BNC at Preston Manor.

Outstanding Students

Each year we award a select number of students from schools across the UK with certificates to recognise their outstanding contributions to the Burnet News Club online Hub.

AWARDS SHORTLIST 2019-20