Budding journalists visited Downing Street to give the Prime Minister a grilling about green issues and his carbon footprint last week.

Heather Baker and Francesca White, from St Andrew's School, Bedford, cut their teeth as political correspondents, and got a flavour of how news comes together.

The 13 and 14-year-old newshounds were also given a lesson in interview technique, and how to deal with politicians by the BBC's Newsround team.

Colin Jones, St Andrew's ICT coordinator, helped organise the visit on Wednesday, March 5.

He said: "The girls were over the moon about it and everybody was really very excited.

"They were not given any guidance on what to ask and were a credit to themselves and everybody else. It was a once in a lifetime opportunity."

Heather asked the Prime Minister about how he plans to reduce his personal carbon footprint and Francesca queried whether enough was being done to build sea defences to protect costal regions from rising water levels.

St Andrew's was chosen from hundreds of schools in the East of England to send pupils to Westminster as part of the BBC News School Report, designed to get children interested in current affairs.

All of the school's 13 and 14-year-old pupils got involved in interviewing when Bedford's Mayor Frank Branston visited the school to answer questions on Thursday last week.