A GROUP of students have been working with an award-winning Nottingham author through a groundbreaking new programme. Erik Petersen learns about First Story...

THE students gather around tall coffeehouse-style tables in the school cafe and take stapled sheets as they're passed around.

It's gone 3.30pm and, save a few waiting around for an after-school ping-pong event, the rest of Nottingham University Samworth Academy is filing out the front door. This small group would be as well, except that they've got writing to do.

Clad in Nusa's navy blazers with bright green piping, they – to a person – possess upbeat, stereotype-defeating politeness.

"Thanks, miss," one says as award-winning author Nicola Monaghan hands her a couple of pages.

"It's my latest book that I'm working on," Nicola explains to another student.

"Oh, that's beautiful," the student says.

"You've got to read it first, then decide that," the writer says. Olachi Nwabuikwu, 16, nods with mock solemnity.

"I'll be very, very strict."

Olachi is part of a handful of Nusa pupils paired with Nicola, whose books include The Killing Jar and Starfishing. They've been meeting once a week since September as part of First Story, a charity that seeks to pair authors with pupils in schools.

The authors spend a term working with the students, all of whom volunteer to turn up after school for the sessions. At the end of their time together, First Story publishes an anthology of their works.

Though it has been running in Nottingham since early autumn, First Story, which also operates in Oxford and London, will be officially launched here next week by Camilla Parker-Bowles.

Nicola got involved in First Story through fellow author and First Story participant Jon McGregor. Nottingham born and bred, she spent some of her teenage years living around the corner from what was then William Sharp School and is now Nusa. When she was the age the students are now, she lived on the estate most of them call home.

"The impression I get from talking to them is that something has attracted them to the programme," she said. "It has in a lot of ways raised their aspirations."

That is so crucial, said Nusa English teacher Clare Barlow.

"There is a culture of a massive lack of confidence," she said. At the same time, students are sometimes bombarded with aspirational messages – so much so that they can lose meaning. But when a successful author who grew up around the corner comes in, that's a different kind of motivation. Some of the students have begun talking about careers in writing.

Some elements of the First Story process remain a struggle. When the Year 11s first became involved, nobody wanted to read their work aloud. Even now, she said, they're still tentative about criticising each other's work.

But Nicola coaxes them into constructive criticism.

"Their confidence has grown massively," she said. "They're very, very confident, very, very relaxed about talking about writing and each other's writing."

At one point, the students break off into groups of two and three. Alidivinas Prusokas, 14, and Bethany Cresswell, 15, take painstaking care to explain how much they enjoy the other's work before offering gentle, useful suggestions on how it might be made better.

"It's really hard because I know him," Bethany said.

"I suppose I could do it to a randomer."

Alidivinas enjoys Bethany's scene-setting – so much so, he offers, that she might want to include even more of it.

He shakes his head as he explains himself. "I'm really bad at this, aren't I," he says.

She disagrees.

If the students tiptoe around critiquing each other's works, they have no trouble wading into discussions about the wider world of writing.

Later in the afternoon they read a selection of six-word stories and descriptions. They talk about Ernest Hemingway's famous six-word story: "For sale: baby shoes, never worn."

Most pupils found it incredibly sad. Although Olachi wasn't having it.

What, nobody ever sells new baby shoes? Haven't you people ever been to a shoe store?

"Maybe they're new brands," Olachi says.

"Oh my god, the baby's dead," Lauren Cater, 14, says in mock-exasperation. Olachi is unmoved.

"Could be eBay."

Olachi and everybody laughs.

Soon, the conversation moves on to what everybody likes about the various six-word stories, and how difficult it can be to say so much in so few words.

It's a free-flowing discussion that's reflected in the writing. This is different from the experience of writing the students get in class, Clare said. There, the students are used to their writing being assessed, not discussed and enjoyed.

Nicola agreed. "They do have a lot more freedom to experiment, to find their own voices."

And they have voices. Ugochi Nwabuikwu, 14 and Olachi's sister, writes all the time now.

"I've had loads of experiences because I've moved to a lot of schools and a lot of places," she said.

Not long ago she and her sister moved here from Nigeria.

She draws on that, and on her father, who still lives in Nigeria and who she misses.

And what about that whole aspiration thing? Well, with Ugochi, they don't really sound like aspirations. They sound like firm plans.

She does not, she insists, want to be a writer.

She wants to be a lawyer who also writes books.