Mental health focus of Express & Star STEM challenge

Thirteen teams from schools across the Black Country and Staffordshire are busy designing and making products, aimed at boosting mental health.

They are drawing on knowledge and skills from the STEM subjects – science, technology, engineering and maths.

Among the schools taking part is Q3 Academy Langley, where pupils are working with science teacher Rosie Fisher and Steve Giles from Oldbury-based cold roll forming company, voestalpine Metsec.

They are working on a pencil case containing items aimed at relieving stress and anxiety.

The Year 9 pupils, aged 13 to 14, say it is aimed at young people and has been designed to be discrete. They were due to visit their mentor’s place of work today to use specialist equipment to make their fidget pen, which contains a lava lamp and will sit inside the pencil case.

They will also be visiting a mental health charity to hear more about their work helping people in the community.

The team meets every Friday to plan their project and the pupils are visited every three weeks by their mentor who monitors their progress and provides expert advice. Miss Fisher said the project was going well so far, adding: “It’s been very beneficial.

“The children are learning a lot about research, engineering and technology. They are also learning about mental health, the different types of mental health and how to cope with them.”

All of the teams are keeping a diary throughout the project, reporting their progress, including the problems they encountered and how they were overcome at each stage of the challenge.

Judging will take place at Dudley College of Technology on April 30 where the teams will each be asked to give presentations and talk about what they have learned during the process.

There are six prizes to be won including Best Work Plan, sponsored by SCHMOLZ + BICKENBACH; Best Presentation, sponsored by Black Country Skills Factory; Best Team Work, sponsored by KUKA and Best Operating Model sponsored by In-Comm Training and Business Services. There will also be a People’s Choice Award, which will be chosen by the schools on finals day and an Overall Winner, sponsored by Dudley College of Technology, which is the main sponsor for this year’s challenge.

The competition was first launched to boost student engagement with the key STEM topics and help them understand what they learn in the classroom will play a vital role in future careers, forging valuable links between business and schools.

Dudley College sponsors challenge again

Dudley College of Technology is the main sponsor of the Express & Star’s STEM Challenge for a third consecutive year.

The college places STEM at the very heart of its activities and is one of a few colleges nationally to hold the STEM Assured standard.

This is only awarded to organisations that offer a broad STEM curriculum and can demonstrate to the awarding panel that it is keen to promote opportunities for individuals to engage in STEM-related learning.

At Dudley College of Technology over 50 per cent of its curriculum is in STEM-related subjects.

It is investing heavily in building new facilities, whether that is the latest technology in music and audio production suites, its dedicated centre for Advanced Building Technologies: Dudley Advance II or its first class science laboratories for A levels.

Much of its apprenticeship provision is also in STEM-related areas such as engineering with just over 1,573 apprentices - 40 per cent of the total apprentice cohort - studying on a STEM related programme.

Debbie Goode, executive director for public affairs and marketing, said: “STEM is the life-blood of most of the provision at Dudley College of Technology. There isn’t a subject or curriculum area that STEM doesn’t touch.

“It’s important to us to promote the value of STEM and get people excited about careers in the STEM world.

“We also want to challenge the stereotypes about what STEM is - we do Building Information Modelling (BIM). It’s still engineering but it’s not the old-fashioned grimy workshop, it’s people using high-spec computers.”