General Rules
Projects must be submitted by March 31st 2025.
Entries must be made by a UK or Eire school, college, librarian, trainer, parent or guardian on behalf of teams of up to three students.
Entries may be made by international teams by prior arrangement with TeenTech Charity. Please email [email protected].
All students must be UK or Eire students in year groups 7-11 or 12-13 or the equivalent in April 2025. There will be two age groups for judging 11-16 (Years 7-11) and 17-19 (Years 12-13).
A UK team may collaborate with an international team. The UK team is responsible for managing the entry.
Projects must not previously have reached the final of any national or international competition
Categories
Schools may enter more than one team in each of the categories (other than our cross-category awards, details below), but you must be aware that, for Years 7-11, only one team from each school would have the possibility of progressing through to the finals in any one category. For Years 12-13, schools may enter up to 10 teams in each category.
Cross-Categories
If your project demonstrates skills applicable to Creative and Digital Media, Digital and Data Skills, Best Use of AI, Ethical Innovation, or Data Science, it will be eligible for our cross-category awards. TeenTech will consider all projects for entry into our cross-category awards where the criteria for those categories have been met. You will also be able to submit projects to any of our cross-categories, if you wish, when you submit your projects.
General Rules
Please read the rules carefully.
Entries must be made by a UK, Eire or International school, parent/guardian on behalf of individual entries and for teams of up to 3 students.
All students must be UK, Eire or International students in year 7-11 or 12-13 or the equivalent in April 2025.
A UK team may collaborate with an international team and vice versa. The UK team is responsible for managing the entry.
A UK team may be made up of students from different UK schools.
Projects must not previously have reached the final of any national or international competition. After the TeenTech Awards final, teams are encouraged to submit their projects to other national and international competitions, but we ask that TeenTech be very clearly referenced.
Schools may enter multiple projects in each of the categories. You may also ask for an element of your entries to be considered where appropriate for the Digital Skills or Data Science prizes.
Schools may also enter unlimited projects in the Digital Skills or Data Science categories.
Individual students may only enter categories 1-11 or 12-15 once as a team member.
It is possible that some categories may become oversubscribed, and TeenTech may have to restrict the number of entries for these categories.
There will be one winning team in each of the innovation categories. Each of these teams will receive an in-kind prize.
Winners will be announced at the TeenTech Awards ceremony in June 2025.
A full list of prize winners will be published on the TeenTech website following the Awards ceremony.
By entering the competition, entrants will be deemed to have agreed to be bound by these General Rules.
Plagiarism is prohibited. Entries must be the original work of the students.
Where students have collaborated closely with a company, the entry must clearly indicate how the company has supported the team, how the company has contributed to the product build and design, how the students have contributed to the final product and schools must verify their work.
TeenTech will treat information submitted to it for the competition purely for the purposes of running the competition. This information will not be provided to any third parties other than a panel of judges chosen by TeenTech.
By entering this competition you are agreeing to the condition that you will attend the TeenTech Awards Ceremony and present if selected.
Schools, Colleges, Libraries and individuals registering for the TeenTech Awards agree to allow TeenTech to reference their name(s) on the TeenTech website and on other marketing material and to allow TeenTech to use any images for promotional purposes.
Team-Specific Rules
Teams can be made up of a maximum of three students from UK, EIRE or International schools.
Teams may seek feedback on aspects of their project from an unlimited number of students, mentors, academic institutions and companies in or outside the UK. Please note that only the original team of three may attend the final, and in the event of success, attend the prize giving.
Team members must be in year groups 7 to 11 or 12 to 13 (or the equivalent overseas) at the date of entry submission.
Schools may enter different teams in each of the categories.
A team may only be entered for one category i.e. they cannot be entered in multiple categories with the exception of data science and digital skills categories.
A student may only be a member of one team.
Teacher/Technician/Librarian of the Year Award
- Teachers will automatically be considered for an Award. When students submit their electronic projects in April, teachers should submit a short (under 400 words) report on how they have run the Awards in their school, college or library and the benefits to pupils.
- A teacher, technician, librarian or youth leader may be considered for the Teacher of the Year Award whether or not one of their teams is selected for the final.
- Students can also nominate a teacher they would like to be considered and should submit their reasons why in the Stage 2 form.
Finalists will be invited to The IET and asked to give a short presentation to judges describing how they supported and guided students through their project planning and development.
Stage 2 TeenTech Innovation Log Submissions
Work as a team to create a TeenTech ‘Innovation Log’ summarising why your idea is innovative, what makes it work, what the market is, how would people use it, buy it. The log can contain up to a maximum of 15 A4 pages and should be uploaded as a file of no more than 8 Mb in Microsoft Word or Adobe PDF format.
If your entry includes a video please upload to Vimeo or Youtube and provide a link.
The log should include:
A 400 word summary of your project, followed by a more detailed explanation:
- Tell us why your project is innovative
- A project timeline describing what you did to develop your idea, when you worked with external experts from companies, colleges or universities and the key dates for developing your idea
- Details about your collaboration partners and the work carried out by the extended team, if you worked with an international school, science, technology or engineering companies, university or further education college
- Evidence of thinking/research
- If possible a picture of a model/poster / prototype that shows what your innovation does and who it does it for
- Who is in your team and other people who have helped you develop your idea – this could be local firms or a college/university/education business partnership – perhaps a school in another country which already has a relationship with your school
- What are the next steps to make this real – input from your mentor contacts
- What you have learnt from participating in the project. Have you learnt more about an aspect of STEM? Have you been inspired?
We’ve provided a template to help you produce your Innovation Log as an editable PDF.
Teachers: If you wish to be considered for Teacher of the Year the short 400-word report on how you have run the Awards should be uploaded at the same time.
The TeenTech website has a Stage 2 upload form to help you submit your entry.
Intellectual Property
All submissions must be original work.
We have created a Confidentiality Agreement which schools should ask contributing mentors to sign to help protect your idea in case it turns out to be a world-beater. You can download it here
If schools or students are concerned about the protection of any intellectual property they might have created, the concern should be discussed between students, teachers and/or the relevant business mentor as appropriate, in order to understand the implications of sharing this information with a wide audience. Schools may choose to make certain details available only to the TeenTech judging panel. When collaborating or seeking feedback on projects with schools outside the UK, this should be considered.
Judges
All judges will be appointed by TeenTech CIC.
The judges will not enter into any discussion about judging entries.
All decisions by judges are final.