Press Pass, NewsBrands Ireland’s schools education or “NiE – Newspapers in Education” programme is underway. This is the fifth year that Press Pass has brought newspapers and newspaper journalism to life for school students.
Over 7,000 TY students all over Ireland received specially created workbooks on 21 November. These workbooks encourage the students to engage with newspapers and to think about how news is created and how it influences society. The students will receive daily newspapers during the week of November 28th and they will receive the Sundays, the Irish Farmers Journal and local newspapers during the week of December 5th.
Following class work using their newspapers and the workbook, students will have the opportunity to take part in a national journalism competition. Entries will be judged by a panel of NewsBrands journalists, chaired by Professor John Horgan, and the awards ceremony will take place next March.
In total, almost 70,000 TY students have taken part in Press Pass since it launched in 2012. The initiative is offered to schools free of charge. Press Pass provides students with an opportunity to focus on current issues, current affairs, current trends – which can lead to interesting debates in the classroom. Feedback from teachers suggests that Press Pass motivates students to become more critical of the material they read, and, consequently, more critically aware of their own writing style.
