This report evaluates the impact of the second year of NewsWise – a free, cross-curricular news literacy programme for 7- to 11-year-olds across the UK, developed by the Guardian Foundation, the National Literacy Trust and the PSHE Association, and funded by Google. A report on the first year of the programme can be found here.
About NewsWise
NewsWise aims to empower children from disadvantaged communities with the skills and knowledge to engage with and enjoy news, to feel confident to ask questions and to challenge misinformation, and to have their own values and opinions. Between May 2019 and July 2020:
- 3,715 pupils in 75 UK primary schools took part in face-to-face NewsWise workshops, giving children the chance to learn about news, improve their news literacy skills and prepare their own reports
- 894 teachers received face-to-face training, helping schools support and embed news literacy across the curriculum, and a further 240 accessed webinars
- 113 children and 85 adults took part in family workshop events
- 27,234 curriculum-based lesson plans and 3,735 free online resources (posters, case studies and tips) were downloaded by schools from the NewsWise website
About the evaluation
The evaluation found that children who took part in NewsWise had increased interest in the news, greater critical engagement and improved confidence when navigating news:
- The percentage of pupils saying they were interested in news more than doubled after participating in a NewsWise workshop, increasing from 36.7% to 75.5%
- Pupils were twice as likely to say they would check whether news came from a person or organisation they trust at the end of the programme (increasing from 29.0% to 61.1%)
- A third (33.3%) said they found it easy to tell whether or not a news story is trustworthy before taking part in NewsWise, and 4 in 5 (82.8%) believed this after taking part
- 98.8% of teachers who took part in a NewsWise teacher training session would recommend it to other schools
- 97% of teachers agree that pupils’ skills in thinking critically about news stories increased and 89.9% say they are now more confident in supporting pupils’ news literacy