The Newcastle Chronicle and Journal Newspapers in Education team has won a national award for family learning.

They picked up the 2004 Family Learning Week Award in the Literacy, Language and Numeracy category.

The prize is in recognition of their work with five Tyne & Wear Family Learning Programmes, which saw family learning groups produce a 12-page colour publication called 'Family Times'.

Thanks to funding from the Skills for Families project, a team of adults and children from across Tyne & Wear worked together at the Chronicle and Journal's Newspapers in Education Newsroom in Stoddart Street to produce their own 12-page full colour newspaper.

The newspaper was then printed on the newspapers' presses and 4,000 copies were distributed across the region to promote Family Learning Week 2004, which is co-ordinated by the Campaign for Learning.

Kay Thompson, Newspapers in Education manager for Newcastle Chronicle and Journal, said: "We are very proud to win this award.

"However, the credit must go to the adults and children who worked so hard to learn how to use the computer system, write the stories and meet the deadlines. They did a wonderful job."

The Newsroom, which recently celebrated its third birthday, is purpose-built to provide facilities for media in education and is used almost every day by local schools to develop literacy and ICT skills as well as supporting the work-related learning curriculum.

It can accommodate a group of up to 32 pupils from aged eight upwards and a typical full-day session allows pupils to write articles, select and place photographs, and design their own newspapers or news pages.

They can also transport pupils across to the Newcastle Chronicle and Journal print works in a minibus, where pupils see journalists producing pages using the same computer package they are using in the Newsroom.