There were more than 800 entries to our annual competition, which requires pupils to compile a newspaper in a day. The winners were presented with their awards at the House of Commons this week.

Pupils at Lowe’s Wong junior school in Nottinghamshire were named key stage 2 winners with The Wong and Only. Chris Steele, Year 6 teacher, says this was despite missed deadlines and panics.

“Oh, gosh, it’s always frantic,” he said. “You start at 9am with a perfect idea of how it will all work, but by 5.30pm you’re all fractious.”

Helena Thomas, 10, said “I was quite dizzy. We had to do about four pieces of work at once, and sometimes I just couldn’t think. I hope I won’t get dizzy if I become a real journalist, but it’s a possibility.”

Stress was not limited to the primary entrants. The key stage 3 award went to the Norton School, in Stockton-on-Tees, for their paper, The New Ancient.

Gill Sangster, the teacher overseeing their entry, said: “The stress is horrific, if I’m honest. The printer always runs smoothly until Newsday, when it breaks down. We’re like dishrags at the end.

“But Newsday enables you to look at the news in a different light. You’re not just a reader, you’re an editor. You have to decide what’s important and what to leave out.”

All winning schools were presented with laptops by co-sponsors AlphaSmart computers. For the first time, there was also a category for podcasts. Seventeen schools entered and the winners received digital voice-recorders and USB microphones.

* www.tes.co.uknewsday

The winners

Newspapers

KS1: Theydon Bois primary, Essex

KS2: Lowe’s Wong juniors, Nottinghamshire

KS3: Norton school, Stockton-on-Tees

KS4: Littleover community school, Derby

KS5: St Paul’s girls’, London

International: Gymnasium Ulricianum Aurich, Germany

Modern foreign language: Cedars upper, Bedfordshire

Podcasts

KS2: Holywell primary, Loughborough

KS3: Rainham girls’, Kent

KS4: Helston community college, Cornwall; Minster school, Nottinghamshire