A TEAM of pupils raced to an award win at a national technology challenge.

Team Ignition, from Robert May’s School, Odiham, celebrated winning a trophy at the recent Land Rover 4x4 in Schools Technology Challenge UK National Finals 2018, taking home the Innovative Thinking Award on April 4.

Team members Adam Trubridge, Callum Williamson, Danial Razzaq and Jasper Mansfield earned the award after two hard days of competition.

The pupils had to take on the challenge of designing a vehicle to navigate an array of obstacles including rocky roads, right bridges, steep hills and deep tunnels on a test track as well as giving a verbal presentation to a team of judges with a graphic display of their work.

Mark Wemyss-Holden, national project manager, Land Rover 4x4 in Schools said: “It has been two inspiring days in which enterprise, business, design and development, manufacturing, coding, research, testing, teamwork, problem solving, resilience, literacy, numeracy, organisation and discipline skills were tested to the max and all our students have really risen to the challenge.

"Learning by practical application is one of the foundations of this programme and the results that the students are achieving are very impressive. The students not only learn about engineering principles and the core education subjects of science, technology, engineering and maths, but they also improve their social skills and communication techniques, which are so valuable as they move into higher education, apprenticeships and the workplace.”

A school from Worcester was the overall winners of the Professional Class contest and will go through to the world finals.