Maitland’s All Saints College St Peter’s Campus emerged the best of the nation at the national finals, with Tasmania’s Launceston Christian School the runners-up on Friday, November 3.

As well as being named the 2017 champions of the science and technology competition, students from All Saints College St Peter’s Campus will be given the opportunity to have a behind-the-scenes tour of the Google headquarters in Sydney.

The event was successful for a number of reasons, Dr Burns revealed, including the outstanding performances from the eight teams from around Australia that participated in the science and engineering focused competition.

Although the 256 students from Year 9 and 10 that participated in the event were a focal point, Dr Burns also praised the national competition by the University of Newcastle for its ability to fill lectures theatres across the country.

“We work with over 20 universities around Australia,” Dr Burns said. “STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) students are absolutely increasing.”

Dr Burns said its origins were in the late 1990s when the deans of science and engineering at Newcastle University put their heads together in a bid to “get more students into their faculties”. He said the “recruitment exercise” proved successful and the federal government took notice. It provided funding for the challenge to “go national” with support from Rotary and other organisations including universities.

Now, the competition may well be a staging ground for institutions around Australia to “head-hunt” talent for their universities.

“There’s a couple of universities, I won’t mention their names, whose only purpose in being involved in the challenge is that they can see that it brings people into their institutions,” Dr Burns said.

The challenge, held at the Dubbo Showground, aims to address the skills shortage in the fields of science and engineering by inspiring teenagers to study maths, physics and chemistry in their senior years of high school.

As well as the high school national completion, the Science and Engineering Challenge runs a number of other STEM outreaches. These programs are designed to inspire students to consider future STEM careers by involving them in a series of fun and engaging science and engineering-based activities that would not normally be available in a school classroom.