Newham students test building skills with Thames Water volunteers

Students from two Newham schools showed off their building skills at the Thames Water Network Challenge on Wednesday (13). More than 40 year nine pupils from Eastlea Community and Little Ilford School took part in the event. Photo: Students from Little Ilford School pictured with Reenal Patel from Thames Water.

Tiania Stevens Thursday, February 14, 2013
10:12 AM

Students from two Newham schools showed off their building skills at the Thames Water Network Challenge yesterday.

More than 40 year nine pupils from Eastlea Community and Little Ilford School took part in the event.

The Year Nine students formed teams to compete against each other to plan, build and test their own small-scale water supply systems.

The challenge involved piecing together their own lengths of plastic pipe and connecting sections to form a mini mains network to supply homes and businesses in a community as efficiently as possible.

Thames Water volunteers were on hand to give students top tips about project management, engineering and dealing with the real-life issues the company face every day.

Eastlea, who hosted the event and Little Ilford are members of the Schools’ Business Action Group, which is run by the East London Business Alliance (ELBA).

Mahad Ali, schools’ business action group manager said: “We are delighted to be supporting the Network Challenge in Newham. The Business Action Groups are designed to create partnerships between businesses and schools, and Thames Water is an active member of the group.

“As well as being an exciting event, this challenge will help students link their classroom learning to the working world and foster their entrepreneurial skills.”

Liz Banks, education manager at Thames Water, said: “The Network Challenge is always a really lively and fun event, giving students the chance to put their technology, science and maths learning into practice.

She added: “Teams get very competitive and it’s great to see that young people today have such a strong spirit of enterprise.”

Sarah Bonnell School in Stratford will host the next Thames Water Network Challenge on February 27, with Kingsford Community School students also taking part.