Ballard pupils are brought up with a love of STEM from a very early age with a huge array of equipment and opportunities for our Early Year’s pupils to build and create. As a through-School, our pupils benefit from specialist GCSE teachers and equipment and are often mentored by older pupils.
The STEM ethos at Ballard is to share ideas and stimulate young minds, resulting in the development of an inspiring modern, problem-solving, design and make based curriculum throughout the School. Pupils re-build Stonehenge in History; explode volcanoes in Geography; create board games in Spanish; enter the Dragons’ Den in English and much, much more.
Our pupils learn how to master the challenges of teamwork, research/analysis and development of creative solutions to technological problems and learn a huge amount about themselves in the process.
The ‘Ballard Creative Techies’ STEM team are well-known nationally for achieving impressive results with their innovative projects having attained a number of regional and national awards.
The Head of Technology is also the Co-ordinator of STEM and a fellow of the Sinnott Teaching Fellowship. He was awarded the Education Business Partnership ‘Lifetime Achievement Award’ in recognition of his development of STEM activities in School.
But STEM isn’t just woven into our world at Ballard – we share our passion with local schools, who join us for our annual STEM events. Past projects include: impact absorbing structures, tower design and build, designing a profitable farm, moon modules made from toothpicks and midget gems, creating an advertisement soundtrack, and making ‘sparklers’.
