Corby Technical School win this year's Northamptonshire County Schools Challenge

The winner of this year’s Northamptonshire County Schools Challenge competition has been named as Corby Technical School.

Corby Technical School was one of eight teams which took part in the challenge’s grand final event yesterday (MONDAY) at The Castle Theatre in Wellingborough.

The theme of this year’s Northamptonshire County Schools Challenge (NCSC) was knife crime, and each of the 31 schools taking part were given the task of coming up with social enterprise ideas to raise awareness and educate others about this subject.

Special guest Stuart Lawrence, whose brother Stephen Lawrence was murdered in a racially motivated attack in 1993, was also present at the event to lend his support to the young people taking part.

Students came up with a huge variety of ideas ranging from games, to raps and even a community bench scheme. Each idea was presented to a Dragons’ Den style panel of judges, including Chief Fire Officer Darren Dovey, Chief Constable Nick Adderley and Police, Fire and Crime Commissioner Stephen Mold.

Laura Jones, NCSC chairperson,  said: “I’m always amazed to see the enthusiasm, energy and innovation the students bring to their projects. There has been so much in the news in recent years surrounding knife crime that I think the subject really resonated with the young people taking part. I would like to congratulate the top three winning teams and also say well done to every student who took part and made the judges’ decision such a difficult one.”

The judges had a tough job deciding on the top three schools but finally decided to award first place to Corby Technical School for their knife crime themed card game called STALK, with each card including important facts about the issue.

The team had an extra challenge in presenting their ideas as many of the team members had to Skype into the theatre from Germany, where they are on a residential trip. Two of their team members attended the event to face the judges in person.

Team member Joel, aged 14, said: “We were so shocked to win the competition but now we are really committed to taking this idea forward.”

Corby Technical School will receive £2,000 and the right support to help make their idea into a real resource which can be used by other young people to raise awareness of knife crime.

Kettering Science Academy were awarded second place and Rushden Academy were given third place in the competition.

Stuart Lawrence was impressed with the efforts of the students taking part. He said: “Things like knife crime have an impact not only on the victim but the victim’s families as well. Victims’ families consist of mums, dads and young people as well. I think in this day and age there is so much going on in the media around knife crime it is really important we ask young people about how best these problems can be solved.

“I feel, if we involve them as much as possible, then they will be part of the solution going forward.”