SETTLE Primary School has been recognised by Roll-Royce as a UK Lead School in the teaching of science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM).

The school was selected from 2,000 entries to become one of six national Rolls Royce Science Prize finalists, based on their year long school project on ‘Foundation and Robots’.

The school STEM team, led by project leader and higher level teaching assistant Sarah Entwistle has pioneered a number of projects and activities designed to inspire a love of science and technology.

The ideas and activities promoted by the school resulted in the school being awarded the Rolls-Royce ‘Employee’s Choice Award’ for 2018 after receiving 41 per cent of the votes from Rolls Royce management and staff from around the world.

The STEM team made up of Miss Entwistle, Year 6 teacher Laura Thompson, Year 1 teacher Joanne Wright and project expert advisor Peter Riley was presented with its finalist and Employees’s Choice Award at the National Science Museum earlier this month after a presentation to politicians, UK business leaders and other schools.

Richard Wright executive headteacher of Settle Primary School said “It is a fantastic achievement for the work of our small rural school to be recognised on a national scale by Rolls Royce. I am very grateful to Sarah and the whole STEM Team for inspiring a whole new generation of children to want to become engineers, architects, scientists and mathematicians.

"We are all very proud to be acknowledged in this way and are very grateful to Rolls-Royce for all the opportunities that they provide to schools and colleges. It is much appreciated.”

The school's journey began at a STEM course in York which led to an application for the Rolls Royce award.

The school was given a 'Special Merit Award' and £1,000 to invest on a STEM themed project.

This led them into the finals of the competition and being awarded a further £5,000 which was used to purchase more VEX robots and K'nex, a robotic arm and other resources.

Children from both Key Stages had been taking part in activities themed around robots and a Robot Wars style inter-school competition.

The activities are designed to encourage creativity and help build foundation skills across all STEM subjects.

Foundation Robotics introduced IKE, the baby robot, who was at the school to 'learn' alongside the children.

The children learned that IKE aspired to be a RefBot on Robot Wars and to help him he would ‘ask’ classes for assistance with understanding scientific concepts.

IKE's presence and interaction gave the children a focus for their experiments and at the end of their topic a way to confirm their results.

The robot was also a focus for exploring technology, mathematics and engineering concepts in the school's ‘Robot Workshop’ sessions.

IKE’s 'research book' is a record of the project as well as his learning journey.

The Engineering Club for children in Key Stage 2 - K’nex Builder’s Club encourages children to build creatively and is also a means of practising engineering concepts.

Following the Foundation and Robot project the school ran a Robot Rumble interschool robotics competition event which they intend to repeat.