This week, the Junior School took two teams to the First Lego League regional competition, held at UWE. This event involves children aged from 10 to 16, coming together from across the area, to share their robotics learning and showcase their programming skills.

There are four parts to the competition, with a professional engineer or innovator judging each one. The girls had to present a project they have developed on how to improve cities of the future, discuss their own robot design, complete timed missions using programmes they have worked on at school, all while showing the core values of teamwork, innovation, discovery and fun.

As Mrs Joyce, Head of STEM in the Junior School, explains, “The girls had put so much into their preparations for all areas of the judging and nerves were high.” 

Impressively, one of our teams named Here come the girls! won the Project Award for their presentation on developing wheelchair-accessible playgrounds. “All the girls spoke articulately and fielded some difficult questions,” said Mrs Joyce.  

The other group named #GirlsCan worked well as a team throughout and spoke to the judges with great confidence, clearly expressing the thinking behind their robot design. Their efforts across the board paid off and the #GirlsCan team won the Champions Award. As overall winners, this team will go on to represent Bristol at the UK and Ireland National Competition at the end of February.

Speaking of the event, Mrs Joyce said, “This particular competition allows our girls to meet lots of female role models who are currently working in STEM fields. This really inspires them.

“As a school, we wouldn’t want gender stereotypes to stop our girls from considering careers in exciting, global, well-paid, fast-growing industries.

"Most important of all, the STEM activities we do in school, as well as the various challenges and competitions we enter, are great fun and the girls here love it!”