News Associates London named best performing NCTJ-accredited course in 2017 awards

The 2016-17 accredited course performance awards were presented during the NCTJ Awards for Excellence gala dinner at Hampton Court Palace on Thursday, 23 November.

For the tenth year, the best performing NCTJ-accredited journalism courses were awarded based on students’ achievements in exams. In 2016-17, 272 students achieved the gold standard of A-C grades in all their diploma exams including shorthand at 100wpm.

The sports journalism course at News Associates London has been named the best performing course overall, achieving an 88 per cent gold standard success rate. The centre was also named as the best performing independent provider fast-track course.

The best performing postgraduate higher education course went to the University of Sheffield. Joint head of journalism, Marie Kinsey and her team were congratulated alongside former course leader, David Holmes, who was also awarded with the prestigious chairman’s award at the ceremony.

City of Liverpool College won the accolade of best performing fast-track course for their further education college course, and Nottingham Trent University was recognised as the best performing higher education undergraduate course.

For the seventh year in a row, City of Wolverhampton College celebrated winning the award for the best performing further education academic year course.

Finally, Bournemouth University was announced as the winner of a new innovation award. The NCTJ is changing its approach to accreditation, and this includes a greater focus on the new and exciting ways in which centres are teaching and inspiring student journalists.

Bournemouth University were chosen out of twelve entrants for developing an outstanding project to ensure students have the skills for the digital revolution that now offer journalists all manner of new tools for engaging an audience.

At the heart of their innovation is an interactive way of longform storytelling, which allows the reader to take his or her own path by choosing different interactive elements. In this way, the user has multiple entry and exit points to the story. The format encourages exploration in the style of an online game without compromising the need for high quality content. It is a terrific example of old-fashioned story telling techniques transliterated through technology into a modern digital style.

Awards host Sophy Ridge, Sky News presenter, congratulated all the course providers, saying: “Behind the success of each of those students is a team of dedicated trainers and educators. Everyone who teaches on accredited courses should be congratulated on meeting the high standards the NCTJ sets on behalf of the industry.”
 

A full list of the accredited course performance awards is below:
 

Best performing Higher Education Undergraduate course – Nottingham Trent University
Best performing Higher Education Postgraduate course – University of Sheffield

Best performing Independent Provider Fast-Track course – News Associates London

Best performing Further Education Fast-Track course – City of Liverpool College

Best performing Further Education Academic Year course – City of Wolverhampton College

Best performing course overall – News Associates London

*New* Innovation of the year – Bournemouth University