Year 9 students announced as North of England champions at Industrial Cadets Bronze STEM project awards

Last week, our Year 9 Bronze Industrial Cadets team, Amara R, Sophie H, Sophie H, Joy Z and Samira R, competed against over 35 other schools and were crowned the North of England Winners at the EDT Bronze Industrial Cadets regional awards ceremony.

The Industrial Cadets Bronze project helps students develop key skills for learning, life and work, highlighting the exciting careers and opportunities in STEM.

Our team, directed by project manager Amara, worked on the project ‘Our Green Garden’ and produced a website (designed and built by Sophie H), poster, video and written report to support their team presentation. The team were supported by mentor Joe Veale from Sheffield Forgemasters who visited our school to advise them on the viability of making their vision reality. They were also invited to attend a tour of the main Sheffield Forgemasters site, where they saw the vast range of engineering skills required to cast huge objects that had a range of uses, including nuclear submarines. 

Project manager Amara, said ‘During the project not only did myself and my team learn about time management, report writing skills, perseverance and gain more knowledge on topics that interested us, but we also developed a bond that strengthened the more we met together.’ ‘I cannot choose only one thing that I enjoyed the most as all the different aspects excited me equally: from the build-up to the final project, our visit to Forge Masters (our company partner) and the visit to the finals where we got to show our project to other schools and take part in the challenger award and found out that we had won the award for Best Overall Project!’ ‘Overall, this was such a great opportunity for us all to take part in and I know I speak for my entire team when I say that we only benefited from this project.’

Mrs Hill, Head of Science and Industrial Cadets mentor said ‘I am so proud of what the team achieved. Our pupils worked together independently to research, reflect and then produce what is a really inspirational vision of a sustainable, community garden. They put in a huge amount of work at a very busy time of the academic year and I was absolutely delighted that they were justly rewarded with the Best Project Award’.

Alongside their award our students graduate as Bronze-level Industrial Cadets, a nationally recognised award that they can use as evidence of their experience and take forward to complement their future applications and career journeys.

A huge congratulations to the team and we very much look forward to seeing what our future Year 9 students will create as part of the Industrial Cadets project next year.