Evelyn Grace School in Brixton came to our London Festival with a group of ten students four years ago and subsequently entered two teams in the TeenTech awards. Over the following year we saw the number of students grow to 80. TeenTech Teacher of the Year, Sumair Mohammed, describes the impact of TeenTech on his school:
Many of our students do not realise life beyond Brixton but TeenTech has given them access to some of the largest science & technology companies in the world. TeenTech has had an incredibly positive impact on our students allowing them to recognise a future for themselves in careers they had not thought about. Since starting the TeenTech Awards at Evelyn Grace Academy we have noticed an increase in the number of students taking GCSE Computer Science as their first- choice subject. Before we did the programme there were only 12 students in our CS class -now the majority of Year 9 select the subject.
We have also noticed improvement to the progress students make when they complete the TeenTech awards programme. When drawing comparisons to the students grade at the beginning of the academic year to their grade at the end, every student has not only met their expected grade but gone (at minimum) one grade above what they achieved at the start.
TeenTech has helped build up the confidence of many of our children. We encourage students of abilities to get involved in the TeenTech Awards but I have found the best influence TeenTech had was on our more reserved students who are often forgotten about in the classroom. Doing this programme for the past two years has genuinely helped build up their confidence, helping them realise they were capable of so much more than they realised. It’s been a pleasure to watch them grow so much due to this initiative.
I have noticed that since starting TeenTech we have seen more girls become interested in STEM, directly through the number who have chosen to take part in the programme and indirectly through the number now opting for subjects like resistant materials, Computer Science and Engineering