King Edward’s Junior School Team’s Recycling Project Makes the Final of the Raspberry Pi Competition

A team of Year 5 creative computing pupils from the Junior School has made the final of the 2022 Raspberry Pi Competition, organised by PA Consulting, which takes place on the 5 May at the Science Museum in London. 

The annual competition promotes STEM education by challenging schoolchildren aged between 8 - 18 years to invent systems that could benefit society using their engineering and coding skills, and a Raspberry Pi microcomputer.  Celebrating its tenth anniversary, this year’s competition asked participants to invent innovations to save the planet. 

Keen to enter the competition, our team of seven Year 5 children worked hard to develop and code a system which helps to educate pupils about environmental and sustainability issues. Part of the team’s initiative is a recycling station which tells pupils which bin they need to put their recycling in and rewards them with house points when they recycle rubbish. The team set up the system in the Junior School reception and got lots of positive feedback about why the initiative would be really useful in helping to improve the School’s environment and encourage recycling. The team also loved learning new environmental facts and gathering ideas for upcycling. The children worked brilliantly together with some pupils working on the coding, others preparing the presentation and designing the graphics and media. 

Asked why they wanted to develop a recycling system, the team said: “We decided to create a program which will help the future planet by encouraging recycling and educating students about environmental issues. Our project is going to improve the amount of rubbish left on the floor in schools and around a site. It will also reward students for recycling by giving them house points.

“We hope our project will make the world a better place. We think that by educating the next generation we will be able to make improvements to help our planet be more sustainable.”
 
Commenting on the team’s initiative, the Raspberry Pi Competition judges said: “Well done for thinking through the whole development process and researching your user experience. We really enjoyed the user feedback. It was a good idea to include user incentivisation to encourage use of your product. We loved your turtle logo and the way you worked out how to use everyone's strengths.”

Everyone at the Junior School wishes Harry, Jasmine, Grace, Lauren, Phoebe, Monty and Theo the very best of luck in the competition final!