MONITOR
EDUCATION
Girls In STEM
Contributed by
Liveryman Phil Jones
F
inding ways to encourage more
girls to take up STEM
(Science, Technology,
Engineering and Mathematics)
subjects in schools, in order to open
up IT career opportunities is an urgent
mission of our time.
In January 2016, Accenture hosted a unique series of five “Girls in STEM” events
for 1,800 girls aged between 11 - 15 in London, Manchester, Edinburgh,
Newcastle and Dublin. 30 students from Lilian Baylis Technology School (LBTS)
and Hammersmith Academy (HA) attended the Royal Institution where they had
the chance to try their hand at coding, take part in workshops with other schools
and hear from inspirational speakers from the STEM sector.
Each event featured a hackathon led by the STEMettes, where girls competed at
the Hakitzu Code Warriors game and London saw a crypto-analysis and codebreaking workshop first developed by the FBI. There was also a virtual reality
workshop and a Minecraft 'hack jam' using the Raspberry Pi and Python
programming language.
Top:
LBTS
Left:
The HA
winning
team
The new WCIT Diversity Working Group,
Chaired by Liveryman Roger Dimmock, has
Diverse IT as one of its four workstreams
which is particularly focused on not only
persuading more girls to take up STEM
subjects at school but also what the IT
industry needs to do to encourage them to
stay and progress. The Education and
Training Committee and Diversity Working
Group will collaborate to provide future
This was a truly inspirational and motivational event. HA students particularly
opportunities to our supported schools and
enjoyed the Code Warriors activity where they were learning to code using
beyond, whereby equality of opportunity both
Javascript while competing successfully against other schools online. They felt it
was “both fun and challenging at the same time”. Girls from LBTS expressed “how in STEM based education and IT careers is
given a serious focus.
much they enjoyed the event and how beneficial it was towards solidifying their
ideas for their career paths”.
The speakers at the London event included BBC Trending Editor, Anne-Marie
Tomchak, Caroline Dinenage (Minister for Women & Equalities) and Emma
McGuigan (Senior MD Accenture Technology UK/Ireland) who generously invited
WCIT to become involved in their “Girls in STEM” initiatives. Emma commented
that, "It is a serious concern that girls believe that STEM subjects are too hard to
learn, so the aim of our events is to showcase the applicability of these skills
through interactive workshops".
City Livery Schools Competition
T
The HA student team in the photo, from left to right are: Samir
Sinno, Ania Tarel, Andrea Kovacevic, Ali Ahmed and Aqeel
Ahmed and the HA teachers are: Rory Saunders and Henriette
Steyn, plus of course with the Lord Mayor, Lord Mountevans in
the middle.
Page 16
Contributed by Deputy Master
Nicholas Birtles
his year for the first time a
number of Livery
Companies, including the
Mercers, Grocers and
Haberdashers held a competition
among their many schools for a
team of up to six Year 12
students to present an
Entrepreneurial Product Idea in a
mock Dragons Den environment.
Unfortunately, although the HA
product idea, which was a
specialised Tablet just for
students to use for their school
an