We are pleased to report that a team led by one of our Year Twelve Pupils has recently enjoyed significant national success in Robotics—an exciting, cutting-edge field. Read on to find out more about their work, as reported by Ray.

I have been competing in the Vex Robotics competition, which is a global Robotics competition with over 20,000 teams competing. Teams compete throughout the season, modifying their robot to best suit the season’s game.

I first joined Vex Robotics in August 2023 and, currently, I am the hardware lead and main driver for our team: 17711E Entropy. As the hardware lead for our team, I make sure that our robot design is as refined as it can be—from brainstorming design iterations to CAD designing and building the robot.

Throughout the season, we attended six regional competitions, winning three design awards and one tournament skills champion. We also have the third highest skills score in the UK. Our achievements at these tournaments qualified us for the VEX Robotics UK National Championships.

The UK national championship took place from the 1st to 2nd of March. We performed exceptionally, winning 9 out of 13 of our qualification matches and so we reached the semi-finals. Additionally, we received invitations to six different award candidate interviews, and were given an on-camera interview by the event media team.

After two days of rigorous competition, we managed to win the excellence award which is presented to a team that exemplifies overall excellence in creating a high-quality robotics program, being ranked highly at all categories of the competition and being a top-performing team at all events.

This qualified us for the Vex Robotics 2024 World Championships in Dallas, Texas. I am very proud of our team's performance, especially considering it is our first year competing. We look forward to developing our robot and refining our skills in preparation for the World Championships, where we will be representing the United Kingdom.

Ray, Year Twelve