The Press Association’s fast-track training course in multimedia journalism has been named best in the business for the second year in a row.

The Newcastle-based course received the accolade at a gala dinner last night at the annnual Journalism Skills Conference in Nottingham.

It topped the industry league table with a success rate of 85pc of all students meeting the industry ‘gold standard’ of C grade passes or better in all exams plus 100 wpm shorthand.

Journalism courses in five different sectors were presented with awards at last night’s ceremony.

Best postgraduate course the Post Graduate Diploma in Newspaper Journalism at Cardiff University, with 69pc of students reaching the standard.

Nottingham Trent University topped the undergraduate table with 62pc of students completing its BA in Print Journalism achieving the required marks.

Highbury College topped the table for accredited fast-track courses at further education colleges with 46pc of students meeting the standard.

And the best performing FE academic year course was City of Wolverhampton College with a 42pc pass rate.

Introducing the awards, NCTJ chief executive Joanne Butcher said: “All our accredited course providers should be congratulated on achieving the high standards the industry expects.

“It is no mean feat to achieve accreditation and to make the public commitment to providing all the NCTJ requires. We know how demanding and exacting that standard is and the public scrutiny it involves for the 68 courses we accredit.”

Detailed exam results for all 68 NCTJ-accredited courses will be published on the NCTJ website in December.