Hi,
At both my current and previous school I’ve had a great experience working with our media students to capture content. I would work with the media teacher to do an initial introduction with interested students and when I need some extra photographers or videographers i would reach out to them to see if any students would be willing to help.
Additionally, I’ve also worked in a structure where some departments (ie. Sports & arts) would have their own Instagram account and it would be run by students from their respective council. The good thing about this is that we had really keen kids who enjoy posting so the latest happenings would be live quite soon after an game/match. The bad thing about this is that we also have kids who do not know how to handle negativity well and would respond to negative comments with something wildly inappropriate. Additionally, content might be inappropriate for various reasons (inappropriate music choices, photo misuse, photos that violate safeguarding policy etc…). The level of headaches this might cause can be quite high.
It sounds like you would only need the students’ assets so I would suggest a client-vendor type of structure, where you give the student a brief and requirements of the event and them having to deliver per those requirements. It worked well for me as the students were in need of “professional” scenarios as it relates to their media work (as oppose to just photography and videoing for their own academic assessments) and were keen for the opportunity. Reliability would be a crapshoot but this should emerge as you work with the student more and figure out who you can depend on. Additionally, I would suggest a debrief with them sometime after the event/shoot so that they can also get some feedback and improve.
Happy to answer any further questions you may have.