Congratulations to the school’s robotic teams: “Visible” and “Anonymous” for competing in the UK National Vex robotics competition in Telford.  The Vex Robotics Challenge is the World’s Largest and Fastest-Growing Robotics Competition for High Schools, Colleges and Universities. Nearly 60 teams had qualified for the UK finals, which took place at the Telford International conference centre. At the competition the North Lanarkshire teams took on the best of the UK and the two teams for Scotland were qualifiers for the elimination rounds. In the Competitions, teams of students are tasked with designing and building a robot to play against other teams in a game-based engineering challenge. Classroom STEM concepts are put to the test on the playing field as students learn lifelong skills in teamwork, leadership, communications, and more. The club has been very well supported by North Lanarkshire Council and includes pupils ranging from S1 to S4. Currently the Braidhurst High School STEM Club has 24 members including their mentor Jenna Young who is a S6 STEM ambassador. Jenna has taken on the commitment to support the younger less experienced members and is a good role model.

Twelve of our S3 pupils recently took part in the ‘Brilliant Club’ scholars programme which exists to increase the number of pupils progressing to highly-selective universities. The scholars programme provided the pupils with the opportunity to experience university style learning as they worked in small groups and were supported by a PhD level tutor over the course of the term in order to complete a  module culminating in a final assignment. The in-school tutorials were also complemented by a trip to Strathclyde University for the launch trip.

For a number of weeks our pupils worked along-side their PhD tutor, Clara Vergez. Pupils worked through a module titled ‘Visions of Vessels: How do doctors see disease inside the body?’ We are delighted to announce that all 12 pupils passed the programme, with a number of them achieving a first class pass. Their hard work and effort was rewarded with an invitation for them and their parents/carers to a fantastic graduation ceremony. The ceremony took place at the University of Edinburgh on Thursday 6th of February. Congratulations to all the pupils and thanks to Dr Gardner for supporting the pupils throughout the programme.

Congratulations to our robotic teams: “Anonymous, “Visible”, “The Quadruple Clefs” and “Me and the Boyz” for participating in the regional championships in the VEX Tower Take Over Challenge.   This year’s competition was held at New College Lanarkshire in Motherwell.   Teams from North Lanarkshire schools competed against each other for an ‘alliance place’ in the UK regional finals, which are held in Telford, and we are delighted two of our teams were successful in achieving a place.   The Vex Robotics Challenge is the world’s largest and fasters-growing robotics competition for secondary schools, universities and colleges.   More than 12,000 teams from 32 countries playing in over 750 tournaments compete to become the best globally.   Members of the robotics club are now refining their skills in programming, problem solving, team-work and driving before they go to the national competition.