The National Council for the Training of Journalists has set up a new student council. It comprises students representing each of the colleges running NCTJ-accredited courses and key representatives from the training body.
Here 18-year-old Glen Davies, a student on Nottingham Trent University’s Print Journalism degree, tells holdthefrontpage about the all-important first meeting in Manchester.

When I initially heard about the NCTJ’s idea of a meeting to get student feedback on their schemes, I hadn’t the slightest clue what to expect.

The main aims of this Student Council 2008 were for the big cheeses of the NCTJ to get to know what the opinions of the students they accredit were: what was good, bad, irritating, and so on.

There ended up being roughly 20 students there. Most were from postgraduate courses, some were on a fast track and a select few like myself were undergraduates.

The “panel” were a nine-strong assortment of NCTJ directors and press editors, with whom we were locked in a room to interrogate about anything which took our fancy. Popular topics were costs, law, multimedia and work experience.

It was good to see the suits taking note of the things discussed. Part of me had wondered whether they would just sit there and nod, comfortable in the knowledge that they would get back to the office and throw the papers in the shredder.

I was interested, though, to see how large the differences are in the standards of accredited institutions. I put this to NCTJ chief executive Joanne Butcher who told me that they are planning to introduce a second level of accreditation, for those centres which are the best few.

Joanne had previously said the NCTJ wanted to kite-mark some centres as offering “courses of excellence”.

I would have liked to see more of the students be more ready to ask questions – the more difficult the better.

Some were good, but after having the floor to themselves for a while it became a little tiresome. Though I suppose this reflects their institutions.

Also rather interesting on the day was MEN editor Paul Horrocks’ talk about the business, its successful convergence strategy and the future of the press, along with a tour of the newsroom.

It didn’t directly contribute to the NCTJ affairs but to get any more understanding surely must be a good thing.

The Student Council is hoped to be an annual event – the current delegates keep the post for one year.

Perhaps we will only see if it has paid off much further down the line.