A primary has won a national schools radio award for its podcasts, which began as a way of improving pupils’ writing skills.

Sixteen pupils at Chepping View Primary in High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, have been working for a year to make podcasts - radio programmes created on a computer distributed via the school website.

Caroline Twigge, a Year 4 teacher, took them out of lessons for an hour once a week to script and record the material.

The April podcast includes an interview with a teacher, book reviews and jokes such as, What is the most musical bone? The trombone. What type of music do balloons hate? Pop.

Miss Twigge said: “I asked the teachers to choose pupils who were lively and energetic but reluctant writers. It is quite self-directed, they choose things they want to write about, like jokes or school events, then they write the script and do the recording.”

The judges of the Arqiva Commercial Radio Awards said that the school produced first class audio material that was directly relevant to the target audience. It was well written and presented and the jokes were funny. hw.