I had the privilege of taking 12 of our year 8 pupils from Archbishop Lanfranc School to the annual Science & Technology Challenge Day. During the course of the day, pupils from 6 different schools were arranged into groups and given various problem solving tasks. Among these were building a robot to perform certain activities, as well as a bridge building challenge.
They were judged on planning, team work and the final product. I was incredibly proud to see our pupils focusing on the tasks, problem solving and negotiating the difficulties inherent in making group decisions and assigning tasks to individuals.This all culminated in Dylan Patel & Bhavnesh Patel winning the Vehicle Challenge and more importantly the Winner’s Cup for overall team work and ingenuity.
These skills are, of course, championed by such entrepreneurs as Richard Branson and Alan Sugar. The question is can the Patel’s came up with better names than Virgin and Amstrad? We’ll have to wait and see. Congratulations to all involved!