9 May 2017
The hard work and dedication of two teams of Abingdon School pupils has paid off, quite literally, with the announcement of the winners of the Blott Matthews Engineering Challenge for 2017. Having worked together since last September, largely in their own time, the teams finally made their submissions in March and then waited for the expert judges' verdicts to be announced. The high quality of Team Interport 20's plan for a realistic, mass-transit system, connecting five London airports to the centre of the City, led to the award of a joint first prize of £1000 for James Hogge, Ben Wilson, Joe Nash, Rob MacLennan, Patrick McCubbin, Kurt Lee and Peter Wang. Competing against eight other school teams, Abingdon's second entry, Team Daedalus, also won the third prize of £500 shared between Alex Moss, Tom Shaw, Josh Washington, Bryce Jersing and Noah Williams. Although supported and encouraged by staff from Physics, Economics and DT, the engineering and financial plans submitted by the teams were entirely their own work and an excellent example of using knowledge and skills learnt in lessons to real life applications in the outside world. Richard Blott and Charles Matthews, both distinguished engineers themselves, visited the school to meet the teams and present their prizes.
