News & Headteacher Blogs

Students from The Downs School Year 10 GCSE Design Technology classes have again won awards in the National School Starpack Design Awards. The Starpack Awards was created to introduce young people to the design process and provide them with an early introduction to STEM industries.

The following students were shortlisted within the competition: Jess C, Matthew G, Matthew S, Grace P, Oscar C, Jade R and Harry R. All received some very complementary comments from industry based judges.

During lockdown at the start of the year, the students developed their research, design, development and modelling skills as part of a mini project. All research, design and mini modelling tasks were undertaken through remote learning and we’ve been incredibly impressed with their commitment to working at home to achieve great outcomes. Further to shortlisting, four students achieved additional awards.

Bronze:

In the ‘Food-to-go packaging to promote healthy eating for children’ category, Matthew S was given a Bronze award with judges commenting on his “Fantastic thought process, excellent market research culminating in a solid design and effective problem solving.”

Highly commended:

Grace P was given a Highly Commended with judges commenting on “Good exploration of concepts resulting in an interesting design that would certainly appeal to children”.

Highly commended:

Oscar C was given a Highly Commended with judges commenting on “Good customer research, interesting idea to shake and combine ingredients”

The students are pictured below with Headteacher, Mr Prosser.