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You’re Invited! Join FIRST UK for an Inspirational Championship Event
FIRST® UK is a charity driven by young people and fuelled by industry mentors, using robots to spark the curiosity needed to explore, challenge and grow. They are investing in the young people who will transform our future – equipping the next generation with the technical know-how and life skills needed to take on tomorrow’s opportunities.
Their vision is to make STEM less intimidating, more accessible and diverse – using robots and inspirational role models from industry to fuel a talent pipeline of future innovators. A world where young people are aware of the career opportunities available through STEM education and are equipped with the technical knowledge and core life skills to tackle tomorrow’s challenges.
Their aim is to be the most influential STEM initiative in the U.K. and they are working tirelessly to gain accreditation for the programme in a number of ways. The FIRST Tech Challenge program supports the Gatsby Benchmarks for careers education and meets 6 of the 8 performance indicators, positively impacting on any OFSTED inspection.
Participants in FIRST® Tech Challenge UK learn to think, operate and collaborate like innovators.
Teams of up to 15 young people design, build and programme a robot to take on a global challenge with support from an industry mentor. Teams compete in alliances at regional tournaments and a national championship – in a bid to represent the UK at the world championship held in the USA.
Visit their website and view a film of last seasons Regional Championships here.
This season, for the first time, FIRST are offering all of the young people registered to the program the opportunity to achieve an Industrial Cadets accreditation for their work throughout the challenge at either Silver or Gold level.
They are also working closely with the British Science Association to align their program with the CREST Award scheme, something that a number of schools and academies are already using very successfully, to bring kudos to many STEM related activities taking place and to demonstrate the effectiveness of their enrichment curriculum.
Although the FIRST Tech Challenge can be used very successfully as an enrichment activity in any school, academy or educational establishment, they feel that to purely offer the program in this way would be a missed opportunity. A number of their Alternative Provider and SEND establishments last season successfully used the FIRST Tech Challenge to add value to their STEM curriculum and teaching.
Using this as their inspiration FIRST are now determined to give this opportunity to all our teams by working hard to gain endorsements from the various examination boards such as AQA, OCR and Edexcel Pearson to use the FIRST Tech Challenge program to enhance the delivery of qualifications including the Extended Project Qualification at A level.
FIRST UK are currently working with 180 teams from across the U.K. centered around 6 Regional Championship events which will take place in late January and early February 2020. Many of these teams will progress to the FIRST Tech National Championships at London’s Copper Box Arena in March 2020.
FIRST would like to invite you to join them in making these events an inspirational experience for all young people. Even if you are only able to attend for a short time, they ask that you come along and sample the excitement and enthusiasm of the day as they inspire teams to become…
More Than RobotsTM
Please use the link below to find a Regional Championship event near you and to register your attendance. Take the opportunity to find out more about the challenge and how you can join FIRST Tech Challenge for the 2020 – 2021 season in September.
This promises to be an epic day!
SCHOOLS: The Big Bang North West 2020 is open for booking!
Big Bang North West 2020: Headline Sponsor – Unilever
Look back: Big Bang North West 2019 – 8000 Children Celebrate STEM!
Look back: Big Bang North West 2019 – Your Fantastic Feedback
Look back: Big Bang North West 2019 – The Movie
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