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Academy host regional finals

North Liverpool Academy (NLA) had the pleasure of hosting schools from across the North West to compete in the VEX IQ regional robotics tournament.

In the VEX IQ Challenge, presented by the Robotics Education & Competition Foundation, teams of students are tasked with designing and building a robot to play with other teams in a game-based engineering challenge. Teams consist of students from KS2 or KS3, who design their robot to amass as many points as possible in that years challenge.

It was a fantastic opportunity for students to put their STEM skills to the test. It was also an opportunity to develop key soft skills that will support their future careers including teamwork, leadership and communication.

During its regional event there were four trophies up for grabs, with two in skills and two for teamwork. Schools from Derby, Alderley Edge, Preston and Birkdale attended to take part against two of our Year 7 NLA teams.

The NLA Blast Team won the skills trophy outright and also the teamwork trophy in the final round. NLA’s team has now qualified for the UK Championships.

NLA student, Adi said: “The VEX challenge has been a great opportunity for me. I really liked that we got to work as a team and use robotics. I had the opportunity to actually be a programmer. I want to go to study IT eventually and this will help me get there. In the future I hope to become a software engineer.”

Few schools within the North West have taken the opportunity to get involved, which is why NLA have invested in the competition equipment and VEX IQ robot kits, in order to support extending its curriculum across STEM subjects and provide a platform to enrich its students with additional experiences.

Looking forward the Academy aim to run separate KS2 and KS3 events for local students. The KS2 primary event will be hosted again by NLA and will provide local feeder primaries an opportunity to use loan kits in order to assemble their own teams and compete in a new and exciting competition.

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