There’s less than two months to go in which to submit entries for school-science competition the Bright Spark Awards.

And with schools now in full revision mode in the run-up to exams season, pupils considering or working on entries need to focus on finalising projects before the May 31 deadline.

The awards encourage teams of pupils to use cross-curricular skills in Stem (science, technical, engineering and maths) subjects in practical projects.

Shortlisted teams will present their projects to the judges at a Dragons’ Den-style awards ceremony in July.

And there are some great prizes on offer for the winners, with £500 being presented to the overall champions and a host of exciting experience days also on offer.

Last year, Bright Spark judge Megger welcomed the Project Stairgen team from Simon Langton School for Boys to its Dover factory, where the pupils learned how the company takes its innovative electrical-testing products from drawing board to delivery.

The Project Stairgen team won their experience day with Megger after developing a system to improve safety in the home by capturing the energy people expend walking up and down stairs to power staircase lights.

Megger head of project management Martin Heritage reiterated the importance of the competition to the company, saying: “We’ve got an engineering team of around 40 to 45 engineers, so we’ve always got the challenge of recruiting new, young, talented engineers.

“That’s the reason where a proud sponsor of Bright Sparks, and we hope that by sponsoring Bright Sparks we can encourage students to be inspired to take up a career in engineering, science or technology.”

The other judging organisations for the awards are Kent Renewable Energy, Atkins Global, Pfizer, The ITL Group, EduKit, Highways England, Discovery Park, BAE Systems, Global Associates and Golding Vision.

The awards are organised by the KM Charity Team and open to primary and secondary schools, and there are three categories: innovation, investigation and invention.

Find out more by visiting Kmcharityteam.co.uk/brightspark or contacting event coordinator Hannah Hawksworth at hhawksworth@thekmgroup.co.uk or on 0844 264 0291.

Watch a video in which Martin Heritage talks about the competition here:

And watch a video about Project Stairgen here: