In photos and video: students race drones at South of England Showground for Mid Sussex STEM Challenge 2025

Ten teams from the area’s senior schools and colleges took part in the event, which was held at the South of England Showground in Ardingly on Friday, July 4.

The day opened at 9.30am in the Norfolk Pavilion with a speech by Professor of Quantum Technologies Winfried Hensinger, whose research team at the University of Sussex recently broke a world record.

He told the young audience: “This today could be the starting point of an amazing career where you change the world in the way you imagine.”

Students then put their drones on display for the judges. This year they had to construct the machines from scratch before doing professional presentations about how they designed and built them.

After lunch, Sussex and Surrey Police arrived to demonstrate how police drones work. As their sophisticated machine flew over the heads of spectators, PC Steve Prince talked about how drones can coordinate searches for missing people. He said: “We can launch the drone up in the air and a mile in every direction and just start searching.”

PC Prince explained that one drone can replace about 10 to 20 officers on foot and stop them wasting time heading off in different directions. He added that police drones also ‘know’ when they are running out of battery and can return home without being told to.

After the talk, students took part in contests in the Abergavenny Building where they had to race their drones around an obstacle course and pick up a ‘payload’ as well.

Haywards Heath Town Mayor Duncan Pascoe was one of the spectators. He called the students’ response to this year’s challenge ‘incredible’ despite the ‘really tough challenge’ that had a lot of constraints. He said: “I think it’s really impressive that the students pulled it off. With mixed success for sure, but the opportunities that they’ve had to learn through the process and the way they put their projects together, I think it’s really admirable.”

East Grinstead and Uckfield MP Mims Davies congratulated the students. She said the ‘frightened rabbits’ who looked daunted at the launch of the challenge several months ago had been transformed into confident go-getters for the race. She said: “I’m just blown away by what they’ve managed.”

Mid Sussex MP Alison Bennett was at the event too.

One of the judges Dr Jeremy Crooks said this year’s challenge of building a flying drone from scratch was tougher than previous years. He said: “We wanted to see how students coped with the difficulty of engineering challenges and it’s really about what they learned as a group from it. It is a little bit more difficult than it has been, but it isn’t the ‘be all and end all’ to have the finished article at the end of the day.”

High Sheriff of West Sussex Tim Fooks said: “This is an extremely complicated project they’ve been asked to do – perhaps one of the most difficult they’ve ever been asked to do. The technological challenges they’ve had to overcome have been enormous. But I’ve been really impressed by the maturity that they’ve shown, their resilience and their perseverance.”

He added: “This is one of the best educational exercises I’ve ever seen.”

Chairman of Mid Sussex District Council Mike Kennedy said the students had leaned many life skills during the challenge. He said: “They can manage a budget, manage deadlines, they can work together as a team and they can deliver presentations about what they’re doing.”

Nick Green from Flowserve, chairman of the STEM Challenge, said one of the most important lessons students learned this year is how to keep going in the face of adversity.

The schools that received trophies were: Oathall Community College for best presentation, Downlands Community School for engineering, and Imberhorne School for being the race winner and overall winner.

Throughout the past few months companies provided STEM Ambassadors to work with the students. The companies involved included: Flowserve, Thales, PSM Marine Engineering, Adelphi, Nuffield Hospital, Edwards Vacuum, Quantum Technologies and Balfour Beatty.

Haywards Heath Town Team chairman Ruth de Mierre said: “My huge congratulations to each and every student, teacher, STEM Ambassador and company, as well as our town mayors and WSCC councillors, MSDC and Rotary sponsors and, of course, our fantastic judges. What commitment, support, friendship and hard work shown by all, to make such a truly memorable day. Thank you all!”