Students won awards for outstanding work on school newspapers, magazines, and digital publications at gala ceremony in London.
The highlight of The Shine School Media Awards was the Scoop of the Year awarded by the London Press Club.
The article was an interview with a former pupil Natalie Quieroz who was brutally stabbed 24 times by her ex- partner Babur Raja when she was eight months pregnant. Quieroz recovered and is now an MBE, author, and public speaker for domestic abuse and knife crime awareness.
The Shine Awards – held by the Stationers and Newspaper Makers Livery Company and in its 14th year - gave prizes for best editor, best sustainability initiative, best content, best front cover, and best design among other categories at a gala ceremony in London.
The London Press Club sponsored the Scoop of the Year award which was won by King Edward VI Handsworth School for Girls, Birmingham for their entry ‘The Natalie Queiroz interview’ by Madeeha Daud. The piece won against 19 other schools that were also up for the award.
London Press Club Chair and Editor Emeritus of The Standard, Doug Wills, said: “Our London Press Club Scoop of the Year award recognises students who go the extra mile to find great stories on their doorstep. Whether that’s a revealing interview with a local politician, helping support a local public service under threat or telling a human interest story that makes the reader smile”.
Having sourced the scoop on social media, Daud’s piece in the school magazine The Beacon uncovered Quieroz’s exceptionally brave story and was commended by judges who said the story “was full of drama and packed with great quotes.”
The judges added it was “a brilliant idea to revisit this utterly shocking story”.
Also recognised for excellence was Oasis Academy Hadley in Enfield, London, which was presented with the Rising Star award for the school’s podcast titled “A question of colour: Black boys in education.”
Awarded to newcomers who show great potential, the podcast was praised for its exploration of issues impacting young black men and their communities. Newcomers made up 34 percent of entries this year. The same podcast was also highly commended in the following categories: Peter Day Award for Best Audio and the Designated Topic Leaders of Tomorrow Award.
Maximillian Jen from Latymer Upper School in Hammersmith, London, was awarded the Terry Mansfield CBE award for tomorrow’s talent. He was congratulated by judges for curating outstanding content for his school newspaper The Scientific Latymerian, particularly its technology section.
Also in The Scoop of the Year category, Abingdon School in Oxfordshire was highly commended for James Henderson’s piece titled “The Pontecorovos: Abingdon Family who disappeared”, published in the school magazine The Martlet. The article combined family heritage with history during the Cold War. Judges agreed the piece was “fascinating”.
Devanandha Rajes from Attleborough Academy in Norfolk was highly commended for the piece “Walking through a landslide” which caught the eyes of the judges for being a “powerful and exclusive” story collected during the 2024 Wayanad landslides in Kerala for the school newspaper The Nest.
Bourne Grammar School in Lincolnshire was also highly commended for a piece titled “Why young votes matter: Insight from Sir Lindsay Hoyle”, written by Ewan Dragota in his school digital magazine Bourne Identity. The piece was both “connected” and “well handled.”
The Shine School Media Awards reach schools in England, Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland, and some international schools in The Falklands, Morocco, and Taiwan.
Richard Chapman, chair of the Shine Awards and a Liveryman with Stationers & Newspaper Makers, said: “In an age dominated by a race towards purely digital content, entries for the 2025 Awards involved news, school radio and even a hand-made illustration. These are all supposed to be in decline. But you had other ideas and repeatedly championed all of them, staging a quiet, insistent rebellion.”
He said that there was a high proportion of printed school magazines. “Not from nostalgia, but because I believe you recognised its power. The weight and meaning of something tangible, the way it allows delivery of the cultural references you told us about within your graphic design, the permanence that makes readers pause, put down their phones and read. Which is quite the achievement in a world where the average attention span is shorter than a social media scroll”
