School Media Magazine Competition: What It Is, Where It’s Run and How It’s Judged

A school-level team entry in which a school submits one student-produced magazine of 20 to 30 A4 pages, printed or electronic, judged as the best school media magazine in an open category.

School Media Magazine is the publishing item of a national school media-literacy programme in Sri Lanka. Instead of one student performing or writing alone, the whole school sends in a magazine that its students have produced: a bound or digital publication with a title, a cover, articles, creative work and pictures, laid out the way a real magazine would be. The programme names the prize Best School Media Magazine, so what is being judged is the finished publication and the editorial thinking behind it, not any single page.

The format is printed in the rules. The magazine is A4 in size and runs to between 20 and 30 pages. The cover page is in colour, and the inside pages can be in colour, in black and white, or a mixture. A school may send either a printed copy or an electronic magazine, and each school may send at most two magazines in the competition. Every magazine needs a suitable title, and the text must be in one language only: content in more than one language must not be mixed in the same magazine.

The rules also describe the kind of content the panel expects. Subjects can range across economics, politics, arts, literature, science, sports and international affairs, and the pages may carry photographs, illustrations, cartoons, diagrams, puzzles and graphs. The writing may be formal, informal or a mixture, as long as spelling, grammar and punctuation are looked after, and fonts of different styles and sizes may be used. The magazine must follow the structure and editorial style of a standard magazine, which in practice means a contents page, an editorial voice, regular sections and a consistent look from first page to last.

Unlike the individual items in the same programme, this is an Open competition: it is not split into Junior and Senior bands and it is not run in separate language contests. All articles and creative work must be the original work of the school’s own students, with no copied or plagiarised material, and content must be accurate and suitable for the school community, free of hate speech, defamatory or abusive language, discrimination and graphic violence. The entry goes in with the school form for school-level entries and is sent to the competition’s own dedicated e-mail address.

For an organiser, the item is a reading and viewing job. There is nothing to stage and no time slot to manage: a coordinator logs each magazine as a school team entry, checks the page count, the size, the language and the originality of the content, and gives the panel the same set of publications to go through. The programme prints no marks and no points for the places, so the organiser decides how to score; the template installs the item with a default maximum of 100 marks and zero place points, and a coordinator can change both.

Where School Media Magazine is run

In eTalenter’s data the exact title School Media Magazine is carried by one template, a Sri Lankan national school media-literacy competition run by a government information department for students of government, semi-government, private and international schools. Magazine items do appear elsewhere under other titles: a Pamphlet Magazine and a Spot Magazine in the generic fine-arts starter, and Science Magazine and Maths Magazine in a state school science and maths fair series. Those are separate items with their own rules and have their own pages; this page describes only the Sri Lankan edition and does not claim use elsewhere.

• Sri Lanka

Key facts

• Team entry made by a school: one magazine produced by the school’s students, entered with the school form for school-level entries. Each school may send at most two magazines.
• A4 size, 20 to 30 pages, with a colour cover; inside pages may be colour, black and white or both. Printed copies and electronic magazines (e-magazines) are both accepted.
• Open competition, irrespective of age category or language medium. No grade bands are applied, but each magazine must stay in a single language, with no mixing of languages inside one issue.
• Every magazine needs a suitable title and must follow the structure and editorial style of a standard magazine. Subjects may include economics, politics, arts, literature, science, sports and international affairs.
• All articles and creative work must be the original work of the school’s students. No marks or place points are printed; the template installs 100 marks by default, and First, Second and Third Places and Certificates of Merit are awarded.
• Idea starters, not rules: a year-in-review issue built around school events, a themed issue on the environment or on local heritage, a sports-and-science special with student interviews, a data-and-graphs issue that turns a school survey into pictures.

On eTalenter, School Media Magazine is filed under Creative Writing and typically scored with Marks. It appears in 1 ready-made event templates — each one can adjust its time limit, age-group assignment and scoring setup independently.

Across the templates that use it, School Media Magazine is most often entered as an Team competition, typically scored out of 100.

What judges look at in School Media Magazine

What a School Media Magazine panel is actually weighing up, and where the marks are usually won or lost:

• The programme prints no marks and no criteria for the magazine. What it does print are the standards a publication has to meet, and those are the headings a panel can sensibly build a score sheet from: structure and editorial style, quality of writing, the range and treatment of content, originality, and suitability for the school community.
• Structure and editorial style: the rules ask for the structure and editorial style of a standard magazine. A contents page, an editor’s note, clearly separated sections and a consistent look earn credit; a pile of unrelated pages with no front-to-back order loses it, however good the individual articles are.
• Language and accuracy: spelling, grammar and punctuation are named in the rules. A magazine in one language, written with care and proofread, beats one with strong ideas and many careless errors. Mixed-language content is not permitted at all, so a panel will mark a magazine down for it.
• Content range and depth: the rules list economics, politics, arts, literature, science, sports and international affairs as possible subjects. A balanced issue that goes beyond school notices, with a few well-researched features, shows more editorial thinking than an issue made of short, similar pieces.
• Visual design and use of illustration: photographs, illustrations, cartoons, diagrams, puzzles and graphs are all allowed. They earn credit when they serve the text, are sharp and well placed on a clean layout, and lose credit when they are pasted in as filler or are not the school’s own work.
• Originality and suitability: all articles and creative work must be the students’ own, with no copyright breaches or plagiarism, and the content must be accurate and respectful of cultural and religious diversity. A panel can set aside an issue that breaks these rules whatever its design.

Treat these as the judging focus, not a fixed rubric: publish your own weighted criteria for School Media Magazine under Scoring Setup, or start from the full story and essay writing judging criteria guide.

How to prepare for School Media Magazine

How entrants and their teachers usually get School Media Magazine right on the day:

• Form an editorial team early and divide the roles: an editor, section editors for features, creative work and sport, a designer, a photographer and a proofreader. A magazine of 20 to 30 pages needs several writers and a person who owns the final order of the pages.
• Agree the title, the language and a theme before anyone writes. Picking one language removes the problem of mixed-language content, and a theme gives the issue a thread, which helps with the structure the rules ask for.
• Plan the page count on paper first. Sketch 20 to 30 pages as a grid of thumbnails: cover, contents, editorial, features, creative writing, interviews, sport, puzzles and a closing page. Check that the total lands inside the printed range before any layout work begins.
• Write original pieces and keep a short source note for every fact, figure and photograph. Anything copied, even a single paragraph or a picture taken from a website, breaks the originality rule, so use the students’ own writing, drawings and photographs.
• Design for A4 with a colour cover. Choose a small set of fonts, keep headings and body text consistent, leave white space around pictures, and make sure every graph and diagram has a caption that tells the reader what it shows.
• Proofread in two rounds: once for spelling, grammar and punctuation, and once by a reader who did not write the piece. Read the whole issue aloud in the chosen language, then print one copy or export the e-magazine and check every page for cropped images and missing text.
• Check the entry against the rules before posting: A4 size, 20 to 30 pages, one language, a title on the cover, no more than two magazines from the school, and the school form for school-level entries completed. The magazine goes to the competition’s dedicated e-mail address.

Frequently asked questions

Is School Media Magazine judged individually or as a team?

Across eTalenter’s templates it’s most often run as an Team entry, though an organiser can set either participation type when assigning the item to an age group.

How many pages and what size must the magazine be?

A4 size, between 20 and 30 pages. The cover page is in colour; the inside pages may be in colour, black and white, or a mixture.

Can we send an electronic magazine instead of a printed one?

Yes. The rules accept printed or electronic (e-magazine) entries. Either way the page range, size and single-language rule apply.

How many magazines can one school enter?

At most two. Each needs its own suitable title, and all articles and creative work must be the original work of the school’s own students.

Can the magazine mix Sinhala, Tamil and English?

No. Content in more than one language must not be mixed in the same magazine. The competition itself is Open, irrespective of language medium, so each school simply chooses the language of its issue.

How is the School Media Magazine judged?

The programme prints no marks or criteria. Panels look at editorial structure, quality of writing, content range, design and originality, and the template installs 100 marks by default with First, Second and Third Places and Certificates of Merit. A coordinator can change the maximum marks.

Want the full judging picture? Read the full story and essay writing judging criteria guide, or browse every creative writing competition item.