Katy Pearce wins new award accolade

A dedicated noSWeater who scored top marks in all her NCTJ exams has scooped a brand new excel lence award for part-timers, as well as an internship with a national newspaper.

Katy Pearce, (pictured right) a member of the September 09 part-time newspaper group, scored a fantastic high A grade in all academic subjects, topped off with a mind-blowing 100 wpm in shorthand.

Her shorthand exam too, was top of the tree, with a 100 per cent accurate transcript. This means that every comma and full stop was correctly placed and not one word, out of a total of 400 was incorrectly transcribed.

Bosses at noSWeat were so impressed that the new award has been created and Katy is the first recipient. From now on it will be presented at every graduation day, thanks to Katy's sterling efforts.

Head of journalism at noSWeat, Andrew Kelly,  (pictured below) told Katy: “It is clear that your considerable achievements while at noSWeat should be acknowledged and rewarded.”

And Katy replied : “I am absolutely delighted to take you up on both offers!”

noSWeat regularly hands out one month internships to six students a year on a national broadsheet newspaper.

Winners use the opportunity to kick-start their careers at a national level,  leapfrogging the local n ewspaper environment.

They join others who leave noSWeat and take up jobs on national newspapers, national news and financial wires or join agencies working and reporting from world famous venues like the Old Bailey and Parliament.

Course director and noSWeat founder, Steve Ward, said: “We started running part-time courses more than ten years ago and have always found  that those who study part-time are some of the most dedicated, hard-working and highest-achieving individuals we ever meet.

“Katy has done extraordinarily well and we are truly proud of her. She deserves every opportunity to build on this excellent start to her career.”

The centre runs part-time courses for both newspaper and magazine pathways of the new NCTJ Diploma in Journalism. Part-timers come in every Saturday and one or two evenings a week. Many already hold down jobs in journalism, while others come from completely unrelated disciplines.

noSWeat was the first centre in the country to offer part-time courses when, way back in 1999, founder Ward visited NCTJ headquarters, then in Harlow, Essex, and received official backing to set up a part-time college in London.

Since then he and his team have has trained hundreds of journalists on a part-time basis many of whom now hold down some of the most prestigious journalism jobs in the industry.

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