Year 8 student long listed for Amnesty International’s Young Human Rights Reporter of the Year

Oxford High School Year 8 student, Honor Shelton, has been longlisted for Amnesty International’s Young Human Rights Reporter of the Year. Over 3,000 people from across the country took part in this prestigious competition and Honor’s entry made the top 10 in the Lower Secondary category.

The competition formed part of the year’s work in English, with cross-curricular links to PSHCE. This involved studying William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Experience, and discussing the way he protested against injustice as well as reading extracts from Kingsley’s The Water Babies, listening to Maya Angelou read her poem ‘Still I rise’ and analysing Martin Luther King’s ‘I have a dream’ speech.

For their human rights reports pupils chose topics as diverse as forced marriage, child labour, the rights of Abu Hamza to remain in the UK, and imprisonment without trial at Guantanamo Bay. The competition provided excellent experience of writing to a tight word limit and deadline as well as carrying out careful research into their chosen topic.

Honor is to be warmly congratulated on her achievement, and we will be hoping to see her shortlisted at the next stage of the competition. The top 10 will be whittled down to a shortlist of three in the next couple of weeks, who will then be invited to attend a prestigious ceremony at Amnesty International’s headquarters in central London on 9 May, where the winner will be announced.