Northcliffe Electronic Publishing is celebrating after winning a BAFTA for its educational website Headline History.

The virtual newspaper project, run by Northcliffe Newspaper’s Internet division, picked up the top prize in the Children’s Learning category at the Interactive BAFTA awards.

Judges heralded the project as a “particularly imaginative, open-access resource for investigating regional history with great design features, making it an engaging and valuable resource for children, teachers and parents.”

After being commissioned by Culture Online, part of the Government Department for Culture, Media and Sport, NEP began working on the web-based resource for children at Key Stage 2 and 3 – seven to 11-year-olds – 18 months ago.

A pilot was launched in the East Midlands, first focussing on the Victorian period and then Tudors, Romans and World War 2, and it is soon to be rolled-out nationwide.

Project manager Elaine Pritchard, a former Nottingham Evening Post news editor and former Bucks Free Press deputy editor, and project editor Julie Bayley, former commissioning editor at the Derby Evening Telegraph, travelled to London to attend a glittering awards ceremony at the Café Royal.

Elaine said: “To have even been nominated at such an early stage in the project’s life is a major achievement and recognition for some tremendously hard work by a very talented and dedicated team.”

She said she had travelled to the event in hope… but was overwhelmed when the award for Headline History came out of the envelope.

She said: “It was completely unexpected when we were announced as the winner.”

The BAFTAs – run by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts – are one of the most prestigious names in British award ceremonies. The academy runs five sets of awards recognising achievement in Film, Television, Craft, Games and the Interactive world.

Competition was fierce. Headline History was short listed against entries from the 24 Hour Museum for Show Me, BBC Schools for Science Clips, the 321Go CD-ROM produced by Scottish Youth Dance and the Chez Mimi CD-ROM from Channel 4.