A PRIMARY school’s club for young engineers is celebrating its most successful season yet.
Frampton Cotterell C of E Primary School’s engineering club picked up four awards for building and racing an electric car against other schools.
Throughout the school year a team made up of 13 pupils from Year 6 has been hard at work building a Greenpower Goblin electric car, with guidance from Steve Harrison, a retired engineer who runs the club as a volunteer.
It is part of a project organised by educational charity Greenpower to inspire enthusiasm for science, technology, engineering and maths through the excitement of motorsport.
Warming to the green theme, the Frampton team named themselves Frampton Frogs and their hard work paid off when they raced their car, Frog Gear, against other schools at three events.
The first was a pre-season friendly against Horfield Primary School and St Michael’s Stoke Gifford, which gave all three teams the opportunity to check out their cars before the bigger events later in the year.
Two official Greenpower events followed, the first against ten other cars at Miskin, near Cardiff, where the Frampton Frogs won the Best Portfolio award and picked up another for coming third overall.
Then against 20 other cars at New Mills, Wotton-under-Edge, they won two awards: Best Bodywork and Spirit of Greenpower.
Steve said it was the engineering club’s fifth year, and the school’s “most successful season yet”.
He said: “They are particularly proud to have won Spirit of Greenpower, because that was awarded for the way they helped other teams who were having technical difficulties, and it shows how well they worked as a team.
“The Frampton Frogs would like to thank the sponsors whose financial support made this season’s success possible: Home Instead, Direct Line Group Auto Services, South West Truck & Van, St James’s Place, Circus Software Solutions, Netbop and Hion. They would also like to thank Tayz of Winterbourne for printing and embroidering their impressive team kit.”
Greenpower Education Trust is a UK-based charity that supplies age-appropriate kit cars that can be built in schools and raced at organised events at motorsport venues.
It works with more than 700 teams in the UK, involving more than 10,000 young people from primary school age through to university, and has international teams from the USA to China and India.
For more information visit www.greenpower.co.uk.
Any local primary or secondary schools that would like to know more about starting a team should contact steve.harrison@greenpower.co.uk.