OCA Innovation & Collaboration Award

On Friday 21 June, the Deayton Theatre played host to the inaugural final of the OCA Innovation & Collaboration Award. The award was setup this year to celebrate pupils who work together to come up with an innovative idea or product, with a £1000 prize for the winning team.

Each team presented and then answered questions to a panel of four judges:

• Ceri Jones – Headmaster
• Clive Furness – President of the OCA
• Preya Jubraj – Current parent and senior manager at Accenture
• and Karin Schulte – Former pupil of Eothen School and now director at GKKC Ltd

The final was a genuinely inspiring event, with each team presenting their ideas with confidence and passion, far beyond their years. The judges found it difficult to pick a winner from the range of wonderful ideas they saw.

Each entry impressed in its own right, for different reasons, whether that was for the entrepreneurial determination of ‘Titan Graphics’, presented by Joel and Max, the technological wizardry in the creation of an augmented reality app for education, developed by Ollie and James, or the emotive, powerful design and message of Jason and Max’s online safety app.

The winners however, were ‘Planet Eco’ who were made up of Millie, Leah, Juliette, Isla, Izzy, Savannah, Sayano, Scarlett, Scarlet and Karlijn in the First Year. Their idea of an eco-friendly shampoo and packaging was presented with a confidence and thoughtfulness well beyond their years. The judges were impressed by the depth of research and planning which has already gone into the development of the product, as well as the clear passion for the idea and the potential environmental benefits. Some of the team have even tested the product on their own hair!

Planet Eco will win the OCA Innovation and Collaboration Award, which will be presented at Speech Day 2019, however all of the teams showed genuine innovation and the OCA have offered to mentor and support all of the groups as they look to further develop their ideas.

This was a fantastic example of the kind of innovation our pupils are capable of, and we are already very excited about next year’s competition!