Young people who live or go to school in Sheringham
currently have no way of voicing their opinions apart from structured meetings. These do
not appeal to the large majority of them and so the biggest voice is also the quietest
voice. Everyone knows that promoting all pupils positively in the community has to be a
challenging issue and we hope we can help to overcome this. Once a month one of our
reporters will be visiting Sheringham High School to carry out a survey with the pupils.
We will be covering one subject per survey and will include two current affairs questions
at the end - one covering a local issue and the second from the national/international
news. We will be encouraging them to approach us to cover issues they feel are important
to them, as we would like to involve all aspects of teen life in the paper. The
@Sheringham paper hopes to help get their views across to the community and in return try
and help the older people understand what makes the young people of Sheringham tick.
In our first survey we asked 50 pupils what access they had to computer games, who bought
them, and what their favorite games were?
Every single child had either a PC or games console in the home and 80% had both, so these
kids are pretty computer literate. When it comes to games consoles, the most popular with
31 out of 45 pupils is the Playstation I, however there were 38% who owned more than one
(there was one pupil who owned a Game Cube, X Box, PSI, PSII and a Gameboy!).
Who foots the £30-£50 bill for each game? It seems the large majority of them looked to
their parents to buy the games on release dates. However, it was pleasing to see that 30%
would buy the games out of their own wages. No matter what age they were 50% looked at
games as a definite birthday or Christmas present. (So now you know what to get the child
who has everything). I don't know how many of you have ventured into the dark and dingy
maze of a computer game shop. The walls are lined with a multitude of different games, age
restrictions, the same games but for each console format, new releases, the same game name
but edition I, II, and III, which are either "unreal" or "uncool".
Best thing to do is get them to write it down! And then there is the type of game -
Platform, Shoot 'em Ups, Sims (Simulations), RPG (or role play game for the over 18's),
Sport, Classic Arcade, Adventure, the list goes on. Shoot 'em Ups and Adventure are neck
and neck when it comes to popularity up at the High School (which may have a lot to do
with the number of games available in this format), followed by Sports games in second
place and then Sims, RPG's, Platforms and Classics level third. There were quite a few
pupils who seemed to like a balance of all types.
The local current affairs question was "Would you like to see another supermarket in
Sheringham?" An overwhelming 80% of the pupils said yes they would. There were quite
a few of them who felt they were being almost naughty for admitting this! So the view from
the young people who live and go to school in Sheringham is most definitely yes to the
plans for Tesco to settle in our town, wherever and whenever that might be.
The national question was "After last years national mess of marking are you
confident that your GCSE exam papers will be marked correctly?" The answers were
pretty even, 38% said yes they were confident, 26% said no they were not confident and 36%
said they had not thought about it.
So there it is, a little insight as to what the teenagers of Sheringham feel, and how do
they compare with the rest of the country? Pretty level headed don't you think? Many
thanks again to Kevin Levy for his help at the High School
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Teen+ Scene
YOUR Column
YOUR interests. |
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The Crown
The Seafront, Sheringham
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