Two women from East Brighton who left school without an O-level between them have become the first people in Britain to pass a new community exam.

For the past two years Margaret MacDonald, 48, and Beryl Goodall, 53, have given a voice to residents in the area's estates as reporters for free magazine Phoenix.

Now they have been awarded a nationally-recognised qualification after passing a pioneering distance-learning course.

The free magazine was set up under the Government's New Deal scheme and is delivered to 7,500 homes in Whitehawk, Moulsecoomb, Saunders Park and the Bates Estate.

Beryl left school at 15 and took a job dealing with mail at the Hotpoint factory in her home town of Peterborough.

She moved to Brighton following the breakdown of her marriage and became chairman of a residents' association on the Bates Estate.

Before joining Phoenix, she had been unable to work for more than eight years because of illness.

She spends two days a week at the magazine's office at the Wellesbourne Centre in Whitehawk Road putting together sports coverage.

She said: "It's turned out a lot better than I thought it would."

Margaret's parents died when she was young and she grew up in care homes before studying catering at Brighton College of Technology aged 16.

She said: "Because I'd been moved around so many schools, I didn't have any qualifications.

"I came to Brighton because it was the only course with any places and I liked it so much I stayed."

She trained to become a chef but switched to a nursing career following the birth of her two children.

In 1994 an accident at work left her in a wheelchair.

The pair are among 24 successful students from projects across Britain to have passed the new qualification with funding from the Basic Skills Agency.

They spent two weekends at the National Tenant Resource Centre in Cheshire and completed the rest of the course over nine months of distance learning.