Bedales Prep pupil wins Global Young Journalist Award

A budding young journalist at Bedales Prep, Dunhurst has been selected as The Day’s Interviewer of the Year in the inaugural Global Young Journalist Awards.

Block 2 (Year 8) pupil Marlie Jay attended an online awards ceremony on 17 June where she met the judges – including American actor and comedian Tina Fey, The Day’s editor Richard Addis, TV broadcaster Ayo Akinwolere and Guardian columnist Afua Hirsch – and heard their feedback after impressing them with her representation of individual lives and experiences in an interview with a young Ukrainian refugee and the British host his family was matched with under the Homes for Ukraine scheme.

Marlie and fellow Dunhurst pupils entered the competition, which aims to inspire young people to build a better world through storytelling, after exploring different journalistic styles in the Block 2 English topic, ‘We’ve Got Issues’. The Interviewer of the Year category sought entries from young people “who can find the real nuggets of interest in other people’s lives”.

As a winner, Marlie’s article has been published on The Day’s website and she will be given the chance to connect with role models from the world of media and current affairs. She has also been invited to join The Day’s Student Advisory Board for a year and complete a day’s work experience in a national newsroom.

Dunhurst’s Head of English Nichola Gotel said: “The Global Young Journalist Awards was a brilliant opportunity for our pupils to share their work with a wider audience and experience real-world writing. It is wonderful to see Marlie’s success and I hope this experience will have inspired her and her classmates to consider careers in writing.”

English at Dunhurst | Nichola Gotel | Global Young Journalist Awards