School pupils from Caedraw Primary School raced to victory in the Jaguar Primary Schools Challenge, one of the UK’s largest school design and engineering competitions.
Endgame, a team of 10 and 11-year-old pupils comprising Rio Northey, Alex Lawrence, Sam Pike and Lia Sims won the Jaguar Primary School Challenge 2018 national final at the British Motor Museum in Warwickshire. The students designed, built and raced miniature cars powered by compressed air. The winners also impressed the judges with their communication skills, engineering knowledge and teamwork, winning the Fastest Car, Best Engineered Car and Verbal Presentation Awards as well as the Champions title. A team of students from Gwaunfarren Primary School in Merthyr Tidfil also won an award, collecting the Sponsorship and Marketing trophy for their fund-raising efforts.
Rio Northey, team manager from Endgame, said:
“It feels really good to win today. We spent a lot of our spare time doing this as well as in lessons and we’re really proud to have won for our school. We’ve learnt a lot about engineering, using software to do things like wind tunnel modeling and have also become better at presenting as well as teamwork. We’ve all really enjoyed the Challenge and are now all interested in becoming engineers.”
Jodi Stokes, Year 6 Teacher for Endgame added:
“The students put so much hard work and time into this project, they really deserved this success. For me, I love seeing the children learn new things, and things that people don’t think they are capable of like engineering a car using 3D software. Teachers also learn, as they push us and ask questions we don’t necessarily know the answers to, so we have to constantly learn and develop too. It’s a great project for the children.”
Panasonic Jaguar Racing is spearheading a campaign demonstrating the important role Formula E is playing in developing the next generation of electric vehicle technology. A big part of this is inspiring the next generation of innovators and technologists to address growing skills shortages and demonstrating exciting and creative opportunities on offer in the company which are light years away from traditional manufacturing and engineering perceptions. The final included a Formula E Electric Car Challenge where teams were asked to build a miniature Formula E I-PACE electric vehicle and design an aerodynamic body.
The Challenge has grown in recent years, with thousands of young people aged six to 11 from schools across the UK competing. Teams spend up to six months developing and testing their race cars, often with the support of local engineering companies. They then compete in regional events for places in the national final. At each stage teams are judged on specification, engineering, marketing, presentation and race speed.
Victoria Perry, Global Social Impact Manager, Jaguar Land Rover, said:
“We want to inspire more young people to help us develop the next generation of sustainable vehicles and technologies. The Jaguar Primary School Challenge demonstrates the importance and relevance of STEM subjects to the workplace and gives young people the chance to learn about real-life design and engineering processes. By incorporating our hugely exciting Formula E Jaguar Racing programme, we hope to encourage more youngsters to pursue innovative careers in our industry. Congratulations to all the pupils who took part, especially the winning team who worked very hard to secure victory.”
