Schools from across the South West went head to head for the annual Science and Engineering Challenge

Thirty-two schools and 1000 students were all competing in the name of science during an academic showdown last week. The South West Science and Engineering Challenge was held throughout last week, aiming to grow students’ skills and capabilities in science, technology, engineering and maths, and is now a highly anticipated part of the school year. Both high school and primary school students are given similar challenges, but difficulty levels differ for each age group, with older students given the opportunity to take their win to a national level. South West SEC co-ordinator Steve Woodhouse said it was a brilliant four days and it was important that regional students had this opportunity due to there not being enough throughput from universities and TAFEs. “The focus is to plant the seed now. Every career, really, has technology involved in it, and a career path requires you to have those technical skills,” he said. Mr Woodhouse said many primary school students were far better at understanding activities involving coding and technology rather than tasks involving manual skills. “They’re online, they’re doing coding and working on games, so they understand this sort of coding thing very quickly and they’re very sharp but they can struggle because they’re not used to manually building things,” he said. Margaret River Senior High School ended the week as the top school in regional WA.