St. Malachy's primary school achieve provincial success at Sentinus Young Innovators event

Primary seven children at St. Malachy's primary school Armagh picked up two awards at the recent Sentinus Young Innovators competition staged in the Odyssey arena Belfast.

Three children came third in the Primary STEM Challenge out of 260 schools and 780 children that took part in the challenge. These three children also came first in the SELB heats later in March this year, a fantastic achievement for a small school in Armagh.

Sentinus, in conjunction with the five Education & Library Boards, organised this event on a Province wide basis.  The initiative is based on a problem solving challenge for teams of three P6/P7 pupils.  Each team is allocated the same amount of materials and asked to develop a solution to a given problem within a set time.  Judges from industry and education are present throughout the event to continually assess the work and select the winning teams.

Every primary school in Northern Ireland is invited to enter the competition, with annual participation of around 260 schools.  Regional heats are held during Science Week in March with five teams being selected from each Education and Library Board (25 teams in total) to compete in the Final at Sentinus Young Innovators.

The whole class also were awarded a second place in The Junior Engineer Challenge.  The project entitled ‘Building Bridges' is directed at primary schools to encourage participation in design and build problem-solving activities. The children were judged by teams of STEM Ambassadors who commented on the children's superior knowledge on construction, research and design.

Under the guidance of local engineer, Barry Hughes from H₂O Flow, the children had to complete a range of engineering tasks with a final showcase of their work at the Odyssey Belfast in June. The staff and pupils of St. Malachy's would like to thank Barry Hughes for the time and expertise that he has freely gave to St. Malachy's primary school, this lengthy project and the success achieved at the Odyseey. The staff of St. Malachy's would also like to congratulate the children on their provincial success.