Winners of the 2023 Northamptonshire County Schools Challenge have launched their winning idea at Corby Fire Station two years after winning.
The victorious team from Corby Technical School designed a game and lesson plan to help raise awareness of deliberate fire setting, aimed at children.
The County Schools Challenge is an annual project run in Northamptonshire to help thousands of pupils learn about important social issues while teaching them invaluable skills. The theme for this round was deliberate fire setting and was led by Northamptonshire’s Police and Fire Arson Task Force.
Corby Technical School’s winning project was the ‘30 Seconds’ game, a card game that aims to teach young people the dangers of deliberate fire setting. The game has tokens to win that can be used in a classroom setting, by partner agencies or by young people and families. An accompanying lesson plan has also been designed and is available to all schools nationwide.
The winning team of five students, Hallé Mathew, Gracie Wilson, Sophia Callan, Freya Binley, and Amber Barber, competed against twenty-five other secondary schools to win the challenge.
The ‘30 Seconds’ game is aimed predominantly at primary and secondary school children aged 8-14 although play is suitable for anyone. As well as multiple choice cards, there are true and false cards, and fact cards all relating to deliberate fire setting and fire safety.
Assistant Principal of Corby Technical School Kieran Fitzpatrick said, “The students created a card game called ‘30 Seconds’. They chose the name because a fire can escalate in just 30 seconds, which they thought was a very important message to convey to young people.
“The game is about educating young people about the dangers of deliberately setting fires and includes lots of useful facts about fire safety. It also has some fun information, for example facts about the Great Fire of London, which makes the game engaging and informative.”
After being crowned winners of the 2023 County Schools Challenge, the school and the team linked up with Northamptonshire Fire and Rescue Service and Northamptonshire Police to have the game professionally produced, and it is now ready to be distributed.
Kelly Crockett, Arson Reduction Coordinator from Northamptonshire’s Arson Task Force worked on the project.
She said, “I was fortunate to lead on the Northamptonshire County Schools Challenge theme of deliberate fire setting. We encouraged schools to discuss the risks and consequences of deliberate fires and to raise awareness of the dangers and the impact that deliberate fire setting can have on themselves, the community, the environment and the emergency services.
“I was keen to see how the schools embraced the challenge and presented their ideas, whilst sharing important safety messages.
“All the schools involved worked extremely hard on this significant issue, and the winners created a fantastic game which can be used within our work with children and young people, to continue to raise awareness and make a positive difference within the county.”
The winning team headed to Corby Fire Station to formally launch and play the game with the crew and Chief Fire Officer Nikki Watson.
Nikki said: “It was a pleasure to be at the launch of the Northamptonshire County Schools Challenge winning game. The creativity and teamwork of this group of young people is inspiring, and the game they created was fantastic.
“Deliberate fire setting is an issue for every fire service. I hope that this game can help to educate the young people in Northamptonshire of the danger of setting fires, while having some fun too.”
Note to editors: The winning project from 2023 has been launched now due to production delays in making the game.
