Wireless grandees meeting in Glasgow last week for the annual Radio Festival focused on tight budgets, digital uncertainty and Ofcom’s record £1.1m fine on GCap for the latest shameful phone-in scam.

There was, inevitably, little time for the unsexy subject of schools radio. Which is a pity: although there is little of it, many benefit, and an interesting divide is opening up. The BBC makes programmes for pupils; commercial radio helps pupils make programmes. Tomorrow, at a gala in London, one school in England will win £1,000 for doing just that.

The BBC has been making schools programmes since 1924 - by happenstance, the first one was from Glasgow - but nowadays, unless you happen to have a child aged between five and 11, and not always then, you could be forgiven for thinking they gave up long ago. BBC schools programmes go out only between 3am and 4.30am, only from Tuesdays to Fridays, only in term time and only on Radio 4 Digital. (Teachers play them in their classroom on cassette or computer.) This is where you will hear classics such as Hopscotch and Wiggle Waggle. The next time you get up in the middle of the night, switch on a DAB radio last used for Radio 4 and hear a kind and soothing voice urging you to flap your arms like a bird or bend like a willow, you will know what it is. And the schedules are never in Radio Times, only on the internet.

Commercial radio is doing something else entirely. Mindful that its core audience is young, it is reaching out to secondary rather than primary schools. Last December, it set up an annual competition for 11-to 18-year-olds, who have to “create a radio programme on any topic, up to 10 minutes long, with no outside professional help”. Although in conjunction with Vision Charity, which helps blind and dyslexic children, it is open to any UK secondary school. In this first year of operation, 27 entries were submitted. The winning school, which will receive £1,000 for audio equipment and a trip to its local radio station, will be announced tomorrow at the Arqiva Commercial Radio Awards.

Three entries have been shortlisted: an interview with the manager of Bamburgh Castle by a pupil of King Edward VI School, a mixed comprehensive in Morpeth, Northumberland; a playlet about a band split by jealousy by pupils from the Royal National College for the Blind in Hereford; and a live breakfast show hosted by two 14-year-old pupils at Ringwood School, a mixed comprehensive with foundation status in Hampshire.

I have no idea who has won, but the last entry is so polished, it will be astonishing if it does not. It had an interview with a French teacher about to run the London Marathon, a showcase of a school band and a “Who Am I?” contest, in which pupils had to guess the identity of one of the teachers from a tiny clip of their voice. The school tells me the only outside help was from a teacher who removed commercial music from the entry. But Ringwood does have a distinct advantage: it has had its own radio station for the past three years, with carpeted walls to help the acoustics, and the expertise is passed on from year to year.

As the academic year comes to an end, good for Ringwood, and all the other schools, and commercial radio, for providing encouragement in so constructive a manner.

paul.donovan@sunday-times.co.uk

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