If you were wondering about the ribbons spiralling up the poles of Hamilton’s street lights — think back to your old school tie.

The school colours adorning some 130 poles point to a series of newspapers celebrating each of the Island’s eight senior schools, starting tomorrow with Mount St Agnes. Since the start of the school year, The Royal Gazette’s youth and education correspondent Sarah Fellows has liaised with each private and public school, meeting with students and teachers, to pull together the National School Salute.

As a show of support for the Island’s students and the institutions that educate them, members of the community are asked to wear school colours on each day that a newspaper comes out, as a part of The Royal Gazette.

Different schools are marking the occasion with their own unique angles in their coverage, as well as other events for school pride.

“Each school came up with their own themes,” explained Jane Vickers at Warwick Academy, taking a break from checking the last proofs for the school paper. “Our theme is our Warwick Academy family.”

In Warwick Academy’s case, alumni are being asked to wear their old school ties, or dress in blue on Wednesday, May 13, as well as sending in pictures of themselves around the world with dolls of the school mascot bear.

The school’s bear will join with Johnny Barnes at Crow Lane to greet the morning drivers, while students will wave from Middle Road and Harbour Road.

Alumnus Marico Thomas, who runs the Glaze bakery, will offer his own Warwick Academy doughnuts for the day, which students will sell at school.

Each school will steer its own course in exploring its role, its history and the latest news on their students.

Somersfield Academy and the Bermuda Institute will offer their newspapers on Thursday and Friday respectively, while Saltus and CedarBridge Academy will publish next Monday and Tuesday.

The Berkeley Institute’s newspaper will accompany this newspaper on Thursday, May 14, and the Bermuda High School will finish the campaign on Friday the 15th.

The campaign is designed to last, according to Jonathan Howes, chief executive officer of Bermuda Press (Holdings) Ltd, the parent company of The Royal Gazette.

“It’s about believing in our educational system, believing in our schools, and giving back,” Mr Howes said.

“YouthNews used to come out monthly. What we talked about with this concept was to bring out newspapers for students, reporting on the positive things that our schools do and getting the community to celebrate it, which is going to be very powerful. We were looking at how we would inform the community about what’s going on in our schools. I’m 100 per cent behind it — I want it to grow.

“We intend to do more and are currently working on what next year will look like. It’s not just putting a paper together — it’s coordinating with the schools and the students, getting the content, the graphics, the layout, everything done.”

The Royal Gazette is the main sponsor of the National School Salute but several other companies have provided much-welcomed backing.

In conjunction with the campaign, Ms Fellows has hosted five-day camps for groups of Berkeley and CedarBridge students, covering life skills from work and finance to health.

Education Minister Wayne Scott yesterday praised the initiative, saying: “The Bermuda School Salute and the newspaper supplement created by our senior school students is an excellent opportunity to showcase the writing talents of our students.

“Empowering a community of young people with the opportunity to share about the many programmes and initiatives that are taking place every day in our schools not only creates another path by which parents and the general public are informed about what is taking place in our schools; but also provides for enhancing involvement and collaboration towards strengthening the Bermuda education system on the whole.

“We recognise this and commend The Royal Gazette for launching this initiative to promote our students and our schools.”

Look out for the first student newspaper in tomorrow’s edition, and see inside today’s paper for details on the National School Salute.