BBC News School Report 2012

BBC School News Report - Thursday 15th March

Childwall School A Specialist Sports and Science College

We have been reporting from the National Oceanography centre in Liverpool, and this is a summary of our two main stories.

Ocean Acidification

Ocean acidification is a term used to describe the changes in the chemistry of the world's seas, primarily as a result of burning fossil fuels.

Ocean acidification is caused by all the Carbon dioxide (CO2) humans produce. Over half the carbon dioxide that’s produced gets absorbed by the ocean. The carbon dioxide dissolves in the ocean and causes the oceans pH to become more acidic.

Up to one half of the CO2 produced by burning fossils fuels has been absorbed by the ocean. When CO2 dissolves in the ocean it creates carbonic acid. This causes the pH of the surface oceans to fall by 0.1 units, and it’s predicted to fall another 0.3-0.4 units by the end of the century.

The shift in the waters' chemical make-up not only increases its acidity, but reduces the availability of carbonate ions, which many creatures use to build shells and skeletons out of calcium carbonate. The decrease in available carbonate ions means that organisms, such as plankton, coral and mollusks, struggle to build or maintain their protective or supportive structures.

School Trip Ends In Disaster

Pupils from a school in Belgium were on their way back from a ski trip in Switzerland. Sadly, the bus they were on crashed into a motorway tunnel wall and caused the death of twenty two children and six adults.

It was said that the bus driver was going over the speed limit at 65mph and he apparently had a heart attack behind the wheel. There was a witness saying she had seen the whole of the incident and saw the front seats of the bus crushed together with blood and glass everywhere and in the back she saw children waving at her to be saved. The image in her mind of children with blank faces looking straight at her she did not even know if they were alive or dead. To quote "The image in my mind should be given a horror movie status" then she called the emergency service for help. One girl who survived and spoke to her parents, said she was pinned between seats and emerged with two broken legs and a broken arm.

Parents were expected to wait at the school gates for their eleven or twelve year old children but instead they had to wait in grief of knowing their child may have been killed or badly injured.

In Preparation for the News Report

Year 9 pupils have been preparing to report the news for the BBC since Friday 10th February, when they went to Media City in Salford to practice Reading, Writing, Speaking and Listening. Students got to go out and film interviews and use the BBCs archives to create fully fledged stories. All of this work was completed to a tight deadline and a fully fledged news report was then broadcast by the students to the Media City site. They worked with pupils from Montgomery High in Blackpool and got to interview Gemma from Five Live. On Wednesday 22nd our pupils were joined by Simon Connell in the LRC to practice creating radio stories.

Georgia said "It was fun and we want to do it again".

Mohini went on to say "BBC school news report is really good and hillarious because it is really hard not to laugh".

Childwall School A Specialist Sports and Science College