In one of its most successful years ever, the NewsBrands Ireland Press Pass programme was recently rolled out to over 10,000 Transition Year students across the country.

For the next three months, students will take part in the module which seeks to improve news literacy and critical thinking skills while helping students to develop a deeper understanding of news media and how it communicates about the world around them.

Participating schools receive free newspapers and a specially created workbook which contains a useful guide to the key aspects of journalism and news.

A new resource this year is the Press Pass Teacher’s Lesson Plan which is a helpful guide for teachers to make the programme as engaging and interesting as possible. Students are encouraged to engage with the newspapers in the classroom, to analyse them and then to create their own original journalism, the best of which is entered into a national competition.

The annual Press Pass awards ceremony will take place in Twitter HQ, Dublin in April 2018.