20 January 2023 Abingdon School in Partnership Over 40 children from Partnership Primary Schools participated in an exciting Dragon’s Den marketing challenge on 22 November. The students were asked to design a healthy fruit drink that could be sold at the World Cup in Qatar. With the assistance of 6th Form Business students, the teams created a selection of colourful and innovative products. They considered not only the health benefits of their drinks but also the impact on the environment. Their posters, teamwork and presentation were judged by a panel of teachers and the Headmaster. The presentations were very impressive and the pupils responded excellently to the panel’s questions. A fresh team of Science Ambassadors has been training hard this term to develop and deliver an exciting series of Primary School Science Club sessions. After trying out ideas on classes from Abingdon Prep School, they are now presenting weekly sessions to a record number of 26 pupils from 4 schools, including Radley Primary and St Swithun’s Primary, Kennington. The 1st session was a great ice breaker with teams working together to make a safe descent system for an egg dropped from the 1st floor balcony of Faringdon Lodge. Every single egg survived which everyone agreed was an ‘egg-cellent’ outcome. In October, Abingdon Science Partnership hosted a Faraday Challenge Day for six schools in the OX14 Learning Partnership with teams competing for a trophy on the day as well as a ranking in the national competition league tables. The Faraday Challenge is run by the Institute of Engineering and Technology (IET) and sponsored each year by a large engineering organisation. The 2022-23 Challenge is linked to the UK Research Institutions’ Future Flight Challenge and the OX14 event was supported by GKN Automotive’s Innovation Centre in Abingdon. GKN generously paid for the entry fee and sent 2 of their engineering undergraduate placement students to help run the event. During the day, the teams of six Year 8 pupils from each school set about designing a prototype of their solution to the engineering problem they were asked to solve, without any help from teaching staff. The exact problem cannot be revealed as other schools are yet to compete in the Challenge, but each of the teams showed determination and imagination in solving it. At the end of the afternoon, each team had to make a formal presentation on their idea to the rest of the teams and face a grilling from the national Challenge Leader from IET who ran the event. All six local teams from Abingdon School, Abingdon Prep, SHSK, John Mason, Larkmead and Fitzharrys, did really well, presenting ingenious ideas with working model prototypes, but the worthy winners on the day were the team from Fitzharrys. Our thanks to everyone involved - the pupils and staff thoroughly enjoyed the event and are very keen to see this become an annual fixture in the OX14 calendar. Faraday Challenge Day New Science Ambassadors Dragon’s Den
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