Rees Jeffreys Road Fund announces £5,000 prizes for schools

The Trustees of the Rees Jeffreys Road Fund are celebrating 150 years since the birth of its benefactor William Rees Jeffreys with a major UK-wide competition that includes cash prizes of £5,000 for schools.

There are two categories – primary schools and secondary schools – with two prizes of £5,000 and four prizes of £2,000 in each category for the school that best answers the question: How do we improve the way that our roads and streets work for us in a changing world?

To help answer this key issue, pupils are being asked to consider:

• What is the big idea?

• How does it work?

• Who will it benefit?

• And what would your school do with £5,000?

As well as the two main prizes, there will be four runners-up prizes on offer of £2,000 (two in each category), along with discretionary prizes based on merit for highly commended entries and framed certificates signed by the judges.

The competition is free to enter and is open to all types of formats, from models, simulations, essays and stories through to poems, paintings, songs and sculptures.

Schools can find out more information and enter by visiting http://www.rjrf.uk/schools

The closing date for the competition is 19 November 2021, with the winners revealed on 1 December 2021 at a virtual event.

Rees Jeffreys’ was a proponent of safe road design and concerned with promoting the idea of roads as an amenity; opening up access to the countryside for recreation and the appreciation of beauty, as well as providing connections between villages, towns and cities.

Following his death in 1954, his estate funded an endowment that has offered financial support toward education, research and physical projects that would carry on his work. The Rees Jeffreys Road Fund’s objectives are to encourage and promote better and safer roads, through design, engineering and aesthetics, leading to enhanced experience for everyone.