With the Easter holidays now fast approaching, it is perhaps no surprise that the CEP challenges (Cheltenham Educational Partnership) are now coming thick and fast and earlier this week it was the turn of some of our Y10 students who this year are taking part in this year's Mars Rover Project to start bring their ideas to life. A largely STEM focused project, it offers a real insight for students into potential careers, especially around product design and engineering.

The CEP is a joint venture between the state and independent schools in Cheltenham (plus other organisations such as the Council, the Festivals and the University) and was established with the specific aim of offering opportunities to our students that are only realistically possible when schools combine their resources. A very popular challenge, which means the number of teams has to be capped each year, this year the Balcarras team were joined by students from a number of other CEP schools including Cleeve, Bourneside, All Saints, Dean Close and Cheltenham College. This was the first of two back-to-back workshops, with the other happening next week, that this year are also being hosted by Balcarras, and particularly by the D&T department. The launch event was at Cleeve before Christmas and the final testing - and judging - session will beat All Saints in the summer. However, these two sessions are very much about design development and the actual manufacturing, which is why the facilities at Balcarras are so useful.

And when you witnessed the students actually throwing themselves into the project during the day, you can understand why it is such a popular event. All day the workshop was swarming with students starting to build their creations, often utilising the machinery surrounding them. The fact that most of them had to be persuaded to stop for a very brief lunch was perhaps testimony to how enthusiastic they were about the challenge. Obviously, it will now be fascinating to see their final creations coming together over the next few months.