Fairfield Prep school celebrated STEAM in style earlier in the year when it hosted an Engineering Day for pupils as an opportunity to participate in Primary Engineer’s annual national competition. The school were delighted that not one, but two of its pupils were judged as winners!

As well as providing inspiration for entering the competition, the school’s Engineering Day welcomed engineers from its parent body to share their journey and experiences as an engineer, and help the children develop solutions to a chosen problem. A range of STEM-based professional backgrounds were represented including biochemical, mechanical, chemical and aeronautical engineers.

The pupils thoroughly enjoyed the day, and their engineering efforts were recognised through their entries into this national competition hosted by Primary Engineer.

Primary Engineer is a not-for-profit organisation which aims to encourage young people to consider careers in STEM related professions. They believe that Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics are key subjects in securing positive opportunities and career paths for future generations, and that this begins in Primary school.

Their annual competition poses the question: “If you were an engineer, what would you do?” Pupils, aged between three and 19 are tasked with interviewing an engineer, identifying a real-world problem, and coming up with a creative solution to it. Entrants are required to create an annotated drawing of their idea and write a letter to an engineer persuading them to select their idea as a winner. Each entry is graded by a professional engineer.

Selected from hundreds of entries from across the East Central England region, two pupils from Fairfield Prep School, Raam P in Year 5 and Benjamin W in Year 6, were awarded Year 5 and 6 winners respectively; each securing one of the two winning places in their year group. The pupils and their families have been invited to a special awards ceremony and exhibition which takes place at the University of Lincoln in July.

The boys were very proud of their achievement. “I felt overjoyed with the fact I had won a national competition.” said Ben. “It’s incredibly exciting and I am looking forward to the awards ceremony,” added Raam.

Martine Saperia, Head of Science at Fairfield Prep School said: “It was great to see the children applying their understanding to solve everyday problems, using their critical thinking skills and creativity to produce innovative designs.”

Jamie Moseley, Deputy Head Academic at Fairfield Prep School, said: “The Engineering Day was a great way of inspiring the next generation of engineers and we hope that it will encourage the children of Fairfield to explore engineering where our core curriculum principles of creativity, critical thinking, collaboration, communication, curiosity and challenge are applied. As a school we are incredibly proud of Raam and Benjamin’s their achievement and we look forward to both sharing news of their special award ceremony later in the term and following their journey as engineers!”