Birmingham primary school takes top spot in science competition

A team of nine- and ten-year-old students from a Primary School in King’s Norton have won top prize in a science competition for their award-winning picture of a cactus.

The Year Five students from Wychall Primary School took home first place in the first edition of a Birmingham-wide edition of the Microscopes4Schools competition organised and run by Dr Alessandro Di Maio at the University of Birmingham.

The competition saw five primary schools take par with each school borrowing a hand-held digital microscope for two weeks enabling the children to take images of biological samples that they have collected, thanks to support from the Lister Institute who funded the equipment loaned for the competition.

Emily Birkett, an Outreach and Widening Participation Operations Manager at the University of Birmingham who helped organised the competition said:

“Microscopes 4 Schools competition started as a Cambridge initiative, and this is our first year bringing it to the West Midlands. We give each school two university style microscopes and a laptop for two weeks, and a brief for students to take pictures of biological matter. We’ve challenged them to try to be creative and to think outside the box! They’ve also been offered the chance to have a Zoom session with two of our academics to learn more about science.”

The judges praised all the entries, including the Wychall School submission of a close up image of cactus cells noting a perfect balance of light and colours and good attention to the details.

Mrs Durose, Year Five teacher at Wychall Primary School said:

“It has been a fantastic experience so we really appreciate the opportunity to take part. The children were engaged in the project from the moment they participated in the online 'Meet the Scientist' Workshop.

“They have been in the playground looking for all sorts of objects and engaging parents at home too, from onion skin, to dead bees, feathers to rocks. They have also researched the type of objects which are best to look at using a microscope, and this has also raised the profile of Science within the year group. Most of our children had never seen or used a microscope before, so this really has been a fantastic experience for our children.”