On Monday, 8 June, three Bournemouth School students (Joe, Elliott and Sam) participated in the national final of the Bloxham Sustainability Challenge at the headquarters of Dalcour Maclaren in Bicester. Seven finalist teams were invited to present an environmental impact assessment of Vattenfall’s proposed South Kyle II onshore wind farm in Scotland. Using GIS, they had to analyse datasets and policies within their chosen categories (transportation, socio-economics, noise and shadow flicker and water, soils and geology) to determine whether the project should go ahead.
We are incredibly proud of our team, who were awarded a Certificate of Excellence for their presentation. Their maturity, professionalism, and thoughtful approach to the challenge were outstanding. They were also presented with some challenging questions and responded brilliantly throughout.
Joe will be receiving an additional prize – the competition was aimed at Year 12 students, thus he was the only Year 8 student involved in the challenge. He was outstanding – the event host specifically highlighted how impressed she was with how Joe presented, and how he answered questions.
Dr Evans, who runs the challenge, said, "The judges found the decision-making extraordinarily difficult. The standard of presentations across all seven schools was genuinely exceptional. All teams demonstrated real geospatial insight, analytical rigour and the kind of confident, professional communication that impresses industry experts. Your students should be enormously proud - they were fantastic!"
She added, "Your team was exceptionally impressive - they were professional, knowledgeable and demonstrated superb GIS skills. Their mitigation strategies showed real depth of thinking, and showed exactly the kind of evidence-based, professional thinking that impressed our judges."





