PUPILS from Nunnery Wood High School in Worcester entered the 2020 Secondary Engineer Leaders Award and came away with some excellent results.

The Secondary Engineer Leaders Award has evolved into a creative, problem solving, literacy and entrepreneurial project.

Pupils were encouraged to look at the world around them to find problem solutions they could solve.

Every entry was graded by engineers and educationalists. In this year’s competition there were more than 50,000 entries from across the country.

Nunnery Wood entrants came away with three distinctions, a merit and three passes across all year groups.

Year 10 student Aliyan Amin, who was awarded a pass, came up with a carbon-neutral design. He said: “I really enjoyed designing my idea. The battery works by pulling back and releasing one of two very tense strings.

“This will make a small ball move back and forth, which is connected to a cog.

“The cog will subsequently spin copper wire around a magnet, generating an electric current.

“Once the cog stops spinning, the elastic band can be pulled back and released again, which restarts the process.

“Apart from the manufacturing of the parts and repairs, the battery, in theory, should be carbon neutral and will work indefinitely.

“It can also work at any scale/size.”

 Fellow Year 10 student Abel Linas, who was awarded a distinction, said: “My idea came from when we are in the car with my dad.

“Whenever the traffic lights turn red, Dad tries to settle down my younger siblings, but this can often mean he isn’t paying attention to the traffic light and gets beeped when they have turned green and we haven’t moved.

“I designed an app for your phone that would work as a smart traffic light and it could beep to tell you when you move off.

“It could also tell you things like the weather, where the nearest service stations were and traffic levels/roadworks and delays.”

Caleb Price,who was awarded a pass in Year 8, said: “I designed a solar-powered rocket. 

“I designed it because it will save energy and be environmentally friendly when we travel to space.

“I like designing things because it’s fun, I can use my imagination, in the future I would like to design clothes!”

Other students to earn recognition were Elizabeth Ford, Year 8 (distinction), Summer Gale, Year 9 (pass), Jack Wales, Year 11 (disinction) and former Year 11 Emmanuel Adesola (merit).

Georgie Lott, whole school development, said: ‘I was so proud to send away so many wonderful ideas and designs to this competition and to see so many of our students be inspired by STEM”.