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News from Mr Grady

Hello Everyone,

Last Friday, I had the wonderful opportunity to watch the EES Project presentations (it was a practice before the final presentations on Tuesday this week, and their Graduation, which will be on Friday.)  I think I may have mentioned EES before, but it stands for “Engineering Education Scheme” and it gives our Year 12 Physicists an opportunity to work with industry engineering professionals and mentors and work towards a project that they design and research. 

On a yearly basis now, for the past 5 years or so, I have been called upon as a practice audience, along with other members of the Science department to watch and listen to the presentations and offer any reflections on presentation and so on.  No one ever asks me for my opinion of the science or engineering discussed, as they know that the presentation will be so far outside of my own knowledge skills and experience, that even the question: “Any questions?” fills me with complete dread at the end.

The students presented for nearly 20 minutes via Teams, and took questions around their project on a Pumped Storage Cooling System, and I was incredibly impressed with their scientific and engineering knowledge, their confidence in presenting, and their reflection on what they had learned from the project.  I can very securely say that the world of engineering is looking very healthy indeed if our students continue onwards with their studies and work in this area.

Very often in schools we are looking for evidence of our “impact” as a school.  We know we offer a great experience, but really, how do we know we do?  The presentation on Friday was the perfect example of the evidence proving that even with the constraints students faced this year, what we’ve offered these students has been a wonderful experience.

The Year 12 students were erudite, well prepared, clearly interested in their subject and enthusiastic about sharing that interest.  As I tried my very best to keep up with the technical and sophisticated scientific language and theories being discussed, I was aware that the students were not just displaying the impact of their scientific knowledge, but everything that we would want to offer our students – the chance to develop their communicative and group-working skills.  Our emphasis as a school on kindness, care and respect meant that this was clearly a successful project.  Due to the collaboration of the students, and indeed in their discussion of the challenges they faced, and the difficulty at times of using new theories, ideas and computer programmes, they had very much set the highest of heights in their hearts to achieve something very impressive.

Ably supported by Dr Fletcher, (to whom my grateful thanks for offering such an opportunity!) these students were an outstanding example of what it is to be an “RHS” student, and I know they will have acquitted themselves very well in the final presentation. 

Although we were all in separate rooms via online platforms, it was a such a pleasure to be part of something that “we would normally do” at Rugby High School, and I hope a sign of much more of the same to come!

With very best wishes, stay well and safe everyone,

Mr Grady