Liverpool student Sarah Jayne wins BBC Comedy Classroom award

The winners of the BBC’s Comedy Classroom writing competition have been announced, and a Liverpool student has picked up a top prize.

Sarah Jayne from Archbishop Blanch School in Wavertree won the ‘Class Joker – Stand Up’ award, beating students from across the country. Sarah Jayne’s writing was commended for being full of visual imagery and using her own personal observations and character.

Open to 13-15 year old students across the UK, the competition is a collaboration between BBC Learning, BBC Comedy and the National Literacy Trust. It called on secondary school students to become classroom jokers and was given backing by some of the UK’s top comedy talent, including Charlie Higson, Kerry Howard, Marcus Brigstocke and David Walliams.

Sarah Jayne, along with the two other winners in the ‘Class Act – The Sketch’ and ‘Class Comic – Clever Captions’ categories were told of their wins with a surprise visit to their school by BBC comedians, Johnny and Inel. The winning trio also visited the BBC to watch their work being filmed and receive a Comedy Classroom trophy.

Winners were chosen because of the high standard of their work but also because they genuinely made the judges, which included comedian Charlie Higson, laugh out loud.

Judge Charlie Higson says: “I was not disappointed; we had some fantastic entries. There were some genuinely funny scripts. I think just the fact that kids made the effort to go in for this competition and to put the work in is amazing. Comedy is a bit undervalued, particularly in schools. English lessons can be quite serious, so it’s great to encourage that side of things, because comedy is such an important part in all of our lives.”

Creative director of BBC Learning, Helen Foulkes, says: “Big congratulations to all our winners – the standard of writing was very high and gave us all a really good laugh. It’s great to know that Comedy Classroom has encouraged pupils across the UK to have a go at writing comedy for themselves and to learn about the craft.”

Jonathan Douglas, director, National Literacy Trust, adds: “I was delighted to join the judging panel for Comedy Classroom; it was fantastic to see how pupils played with language and grammar in clever ways to create hilarious scripts and captions.

“The impressive standard of entries shows how comedy can capture pupils’ imagination and mobilise great writing in the classroom.”

The winner’s reactions can be seen here at www.bbc.co.uk/comedyclassroom.