Junior School team finalists in the pa raspberry pi competiton
There was much excitement at the Junior School this week as our keen young coders learnt that one of their teams has reached the final of the PA Raspberry Pi Competition and are off to Google HQ in London on the 1st May to showcase their solution for building a positive human future.
This is the fourth year in a row that a KES Junior School team has reached the final (successfully winning the competitions twice) and the enthusiasm for coding and engineering has gripped both the Senior and Junior Schools as teams across multiple year groups entered the competition.
Designed to encourage an interest in STEM, and to give schoolchildren the tools and opportunity to invent products that can benefit society, the PA Raspberry Pi Competition asks teams to use their engineering and coding skills and a Raspberry Pi microcomputer to come up with solutions to global challenges. This year’s finalist projects from pupils responded to the theme of building a positive human future, be it in health, sustainable transport, keeping communities safe, prioritising planet-positive products or powering the future.
In response to the brief, our Year 4-6 ‘Carbon Raspberries’ team were keen to raise awareness about carbon footprints to encourage pupils at primary schools to take steps to reduce their impact on the environment. They have created a program which asks pupils about different areas of their carbon footprint, from waste and travel to school to energy use. Based on answers a score is then outputted to a model carbon footprint that uses a traffic lights system to show how well pupils are doing in specific areas, with a coded results page providing personalised feedback on ways to improve their footprint.
Commenting on the competition, Mrs Cook, ICT & Computing Co-ordinator at the Junior School said: “All our teams have worked really hard all year and produced some fantastic projects for the judges’ consideration, from highlighting sustainable fashion to raising awareness of different learning needs. Everyone is delighted for the Carbon Raspberries, and in the final week of preparation ahead of the final, all our Raspberry Pi teams are working together to support the team. We wish them the very best of luck at next week’s final.”
Here at KES our Sustainability Strategy embraces six key areas of school life including the energy we consume, the food we eat, our waste management policies, how we tend and preserve our biodiversity/grounds, our approach to transport and the embedding of sustainability in our curriculum.
Recent initiatives at school include:
- 40% of energy at our North Road campus provided by solar panels
- A new zero waste tuck shop developed by pupils in the Environmental Action Group.
- A Smarter Travel Week just before half term
- A new net zero carbon in use Academic and Pastoral Building opening next year
