ASPIRING engineers at Royal Wootton Bassett Academy were thrilled when they were presented with an award usually reserved for GCSE students.

Twelve students in Year 9 received the award in recognition of their commitment to science, technology, engineering and maths through the engineering club they set up last October.

Sarah Day, KS4 Co-Ordinator for DT, said: ”There isn’t much interest in jobs in the engineering industry so we wanted to set something up to encourage youngsters to consider engineering as a career.

“It started off as a weekly club and we had guest speakers from TE-Connectivity and Praxair.

“We started working on a project and the students had to build a model of an eco school.”

As well as bringing home their qualifications they also won a silver trophy in the Go4Set awards after being recognised by their peers in the national inter-school competition.

Callum Bradley, a team leader in the engineering club, said: “I’ve always been interested in engineering and I always used to enjoy taking things apart and putting them back together again.

“The club has been really good fun, we all got into it. It was also a really good opportunity to get a qualification.

“I’m really pleased with how we did.”

To find out more about Go4Set, visit www.etrust.org.uk/go4set.cfm