PA Consulting names date for 2024 Raspberry Pi competition for schools

This year’s theme is to ‘improve health and well-being, at home, office, school or on the move’, and the venue will be at the Google offices in Pancras Square, London.

With the aim of encouraging young people to get excited by STEM, the annual competition – now in its 12th year – challenges the school children, of different age groups, to make the most of the Raspberry Pi’s capabilities and solve real world problems. Last year, for example, the theme was ‘Accelerating Energy Transition’.

“Our Raspberry Pi competition is a fantastic opportunity for budding technologists across the UK to showcase their imagination and coding skills,” said Jiten Kachhela, Global Head of Digital & Data at PA Consulting.

“Promoting STEM education is important to our purpose; this competition offers students the platform to put their ingenuity to the test, ignite their creative spark and use technology in innovative ways to find a solution to this global challenge.”

The competition is open to all students in UK schools and colleges, offering a chance to win £1000 for their alma mater. Participants may enter individually or in teams and will be judged in four age categories based on their academic years for school or college.

Submissions will judged on “creativity, technical achievement, and benefit to society” by a panel of industry experts. And the judges come from a range of organisations including Rentokil Initial, Google Cloud, Anglia Ruskin University, NHS England, and the Department of Health and Social Care.

Note that a set of free resources has been made available by PA to help the teams and their teachers. These include webinars for teachers, to provide hints and tips to guide their teams, interactive support sessions with tech experts from PA Consulting’s partner organisations, and Raspberry Pi computers themselves, for the first one hundred teams to enter.

You can read full details of the STEM competition.

See also: UKESF, Apple strengthen ‘Girls into Electronics’ partnership