There were joyous scenes and great celebrations at Barryroe National School yesterday, with the announcement that a group of its third class pupils had scooped the 2025 STEPS Young Engineers Award, beating some six hundred other schools to take the prestigious accolade.
BY MARTIN WALSH
Their prizewinning project was about saving lives at sea, coinciding nicely with the 200th anniversary of the first lifeboat in Courtmacsherry, which also falls this year.
There was something of a 2-1 for the region, as St Mary’s Primary School in Rosscarbery were also successful in the annual award, as they took the runner up prize for their project on renewable energy ecofriendly lighting.
The criteria for the competition, is to solve a problem in the local area through the means of engineering.
The winning team – Meg Adams, Zac Guerin, Conor Griffin, Saidhbh Deasy, Aoife Whelton and Rian O’Leary – devised a wristband that has a compressed air chamber on one side and on the other side, a folded balloon in the shape of a ring buoy with a lever in between.
The lever activates the expansion of the balloon that pulls the person in difficulty up out of the water, who can then rest their hands until help arrives.
Their delighted teacher Niamh Murray told The Southern Star how this initiative showed their ability to ‘think outside the box.’
‘It encouraged the children, not only to recognise problems in the community, but also to work collaboratively to solve, design and create a prototype to demonstrate their solution.’ Initially, four groups from third class worked on four separate projects, but supported each other throughout.
‘We used whole-class brainstorming sessions to support each other’s projects’, said Ms Murray. After numerous group sessions, they presented the four projects to Nikhi Vengatesan, a visiting engineer with STEPS Ireland, who was extremely supportive of all their innovations. While the school was informed that one of the groups had made the final selection, it wasn’t until yesterday that the results were declared at the school, in a ceremony that was livestreamed yesterday, Wednesday May 31st. Ms Murray said the school were ‘thrilled’ with the news.
‘It has made the entire third class realise that they can aspire to do anything and that they can make a difference.’ Likewise, school principal Orla Whelton said they were delighted: ‘We are very proud of Múin Niamh and all the pupils of third class, who have worked so hard on this project.
Our school has a long tradition of excellence in STEM’, she added, ‘having won Gold Curious Minds Awards for excellence in maths and science awarded by Research Ireland.
The school also participates annually in the primary science fair at the BT Young Scientist Exhibition.’
Praising this year’s entrants to the STEPS Young Engineers Award, Damien Owens, Director General of Engineers Ireland, said: ‘Engineering is about the application of science to real world problems, developing solutions that can assist people across the world. It is marvellous to see the students at Barryroe National School excel in this approach to problem solving with this creative design and congratulations to all of our entrants this year for their innovation and hard work on their projects. The future of Irish engineering is indeed in good hands.’
The groups from both Barryroe and Rosscarbery schools receive an engineering show for the school from ‘Mark the Science Guy’ and all finalists receive a trophy, medals and framed certificates.
