“Children write better when they have an audience,” says Éilis Treacy. Hence the ‘Eyrecourt Examiner’, a monthly magazine written, produced and sold locally by her national school.

Treacy, who teaches fifth and sixth class as well as acting as principal of the 76-pupil school, sees the publication as a way of marrying goals in literacy, numeracy and information technology.

Her previous school, in Creagh, Ballinasloe, had run a similar newspaper, which gave pupils an incentive to “reread what they are writing”, a crucial developmental tool.

Treacy (right, with chief editor Anna Larkin), who has a master’s in digital media development for education, advertises for journalists at the start of each year, and they hold regular conferences to decide what to cover and review.

When they see their own work on the whiteboard “they start to notice grammar, commas and capitals, or if we have spelled ‘there’ as ‘their’, or if ‘great’ has been used five times in a paragraph and we need to make it more interesting.”

Their paper (@Eyrecourt_News), which costs €2, often sells out.

“There is a bit of pressure on them; their grandparents are reading it,” which helps to keep standards up.