News Interview
192 candidates; 104 passed - 54 per cent

This interview exam was a straightforward story. Armed robbers rode a motorcycle into an Oxdown store, held a woman hostage, shot and injured the duty manager who tried to help her, and fled with £800 in cash and goods. However, combining these facts was a challenge for a many of candidates.

With a few exceptions, most trainees managed to write to length. There were some excellent accounts of the raid's drama. Editors would have been proud to see the efforts of these candidates.

Markers were looking for a racy, news style with details retold in an appropriate order. Quite a few reports didn't mention the shooting in the intro - regarded as essential by markers. And many didn't capitalise on the unusual nature of the raid i.e. robbers riding a motorcycle into a supermarket. It was either buried under a weight of injuries and condition checks or, as in some cases, not mentioned at all except to say the robbers rode off on one.

Candidates need to be mindful of when events happen and when stories are published. For example, the report was for Saturday's Oxdown Gazette, but some accounts said the raid happened 'yesterday' (Friday), when it should have said Thursday.

Many trainees omitted descriptions of the robbers and/or motorcycle. One candidate didn't even name the store. A marker's comment read: "The trainee asked about pictures and left a contact number (not required), but failed to ask for a description of the motorcycle or family details of injured staff." Indeed, only a small percentage of candidates bothered to ask about Simon and Olga's personal details (marital status, children, service).

Constructive comments from NCE interview assessors included: don't rapid-fire questions at the interviewee, listen to the answers; brushing up on shorthand would have helped with note-taking; preparing questions and trying to visualise what happened would have been an advantage.

In terms of language both victims had their names misspelt. Dier was produced as Dire, Dyer and Dear. Sometimes a combination of at least two of these appeared in the same story. Dier is a name any journalist might be expected to query. She was even given a sex change by some candidates who referred to her as mister. Harding became Hading. Even Lettman was misspelt, and this name appeared in the reporter's written brief.

It is commonly agreed and, indeed, style on the majority of newspapers that motorcycles are ridden and cars driven. This was frequently mixed up in far too many of the papers, although candidates were not penalised.

Markers reported a fair amount of carelessness. For example the robbers were described as ramraiders (on a motorcycle?), the duty manager was called the deputy manager; 'armed robbers shot' when only one of them had a gun; kiosk was a word trainees had a problem spelling. Standards of grammar, punctuation and basic sentence construction were lower than expected.

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