Pupils from Felsted Prep School have wowed the judges and the Mayor of Chelmsford, Linda Mascot, with their bright ideas at the CSES TEXPO competition – the annual Schools’ Technology Exhibition.
The STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art (Creativity) & Mathematics) competition, hosted by CSES (Chelmsford Science & Engineering Society) at Anglia Ruskin University (ARU) in Chelmsford, is open to children in Years 5-13 from all schools across Essex.
Pupils are encouraged to enter any STEAM projects they’ve already been working on, including coursework, hobby projects, even entries from clubs or other competitions – to give them the opportunity to showcase their projects to members of industry; a valuable opportunity to gain professional feedback from scientists and engineers.
The full-day event presents children with awards across 9 categories, covering all technical disciplines. Felsted pupils did remarkably well, achieving several awards, including; Concept Design; won by Thomas F and Theo T for their design to filter water to prevent disease, Technical Design; won by Olivia A, Amelie F and Georgie W for their research on growing plants using recycled water, Design Execution; won by Jesse W, Charlie K, Ocean F, Noah C, George V, and Noah C for their Festival Shelter project and The ARU Sustainability Award won by Thomas CS and Oliver HA, who made speakers from recycled wood and plastic and parts from scrapped cars.
A Felsted pupil also won The Lucy Pettet Award For Innovation. It was won by one of the youngest entrants of this year’s competition, Jenson P, aged 11. The CSES Twitter account commented; “This very talented young man from Felsted Prep showed us great design skills with his ‘Q-boid Designs’ project”.
When announcing the winners, the CSES Twitter account also remarked on the number of Felsted pupils appearing in the list, commenting; “If you think you’ve seen lots of students from Felsted Prep it’s because they entered lots of projects!”. They proceeded to present four more teams from Felsted and thanked the school for being ‘such great supporters’ of the competition.
Christina Bury, Assistant Head (Academic) at Felsted Prep School, commented; “At Felsted, we seek to develop the character of every pupil, to help prepare them for life beyond school. STEAM competitions like this offer a fantastic learning experience for the children and really allow them to grow in confidence with their ideas, execution and presentation skills, as well as honing their public speaking and interview abilities. Our pupils did very well at the competition and achieved a great deal with their projects based around solving real life problems linked to environmental issues and sustainability, of which they should all be very proud.”
Felsted, a co-educational independent day and boarding school in North Essex, holds the Silver Science STEM Award, which recognises the school’s successful approach to developing skills useful for employment and life in general, including how to think critically and evaluate information, apply knowledge, conduct research and problem-solve. Indeed, Felsted’s STEAM successes span the age range from the Primary Gold Quality Mark for Science achieved by the Prep School, to the prestigious Arkwright Engineering Scholarship secured most recently by a Sixth Former.
Categories: Felsted School School News
