SIX teams of students from Eastbourne Primary and Secondary schools took part in the Young Engineers Challenge on Monday, 2nd February at Eastbourne Town Hall.
The Challenge was organised by the Eastbourne Education Business Partnership CIO – part of the Engineering Club programme.
Our workshop host was Andy Hoang, from the award-winning business – Beyond Blocks.
Students had to work in teams to firstly build a monorail, which spanned almost the entire length of the Assembly Hall, with three tables providing only some support.
The main challenge involved robot and bridge building. Andy said: “The children had to work in teams to solve engineering problems built with LEGO bricks for the title of this year’s Engineering champions.
“It was great to see the children pushing themselves to solve problems, which involved getting across gaps by building robots and even after about five hours of robot building, they just didn’t want to stop.”
The Challenge was sponsored by Whiteline Manufacturing, Edwards Vacuum, and Cooden Tax Consulting.
The Mayor of Eastbourne, Councillor Margaret Bannister, commented afterwards: “It was great to see the children so engaged with this fun but challenging activity. Engineering is problem solving and the children employed great team skills to complete their robots and bridges”.
The winning team were pupils from St Andrew’s Prep, with runners up from Willingdon Community School. Also taking part were pupils from Bede’s, Stone Cross School and Gildredge House.
The Eastbourne Education Business Partnership CIO works with schools, businesses and organisations to give children and young people real-world learning experiences.
