CALABAR HIGH SCHOOL

 The Calabar robotics club is located at the Calabar High School. The Calabar robotics club is a club that is aimed at sharing and teaching Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics to high school students. The club aims to nurture the spirit of innovation, quality robotics, and nation-building through in the students. 

The club started in September 2016. The club introduced the students to the VEX IQ robot. Calabar was one of the few schools that participate in robotics at this time. The club never participated in competitions, however, robotics was used to help to teach students from all year groups of how STEM can be used in the real world.
In 2017, the club started a new course of robotics in the high school’s curriculum. This includes teaching robotics at the grade 9 level of the school. This was something new in Jamaica at the time. This was used to spark the interest of the students in robotics while providing a practical environment to use what they learned

In 2018, the club pivoted to a competition perspective. The teaching of robotics started to mature, however, new activities and competitions where created for the club to participate in with other schools in Jamaica. The club continues to with its goals in participating in a robotics competition and teaching robotics ever since that day.

Members of the winning Calabar High School FIRST Tech Robotics Challenge team (from left): David Lynch, Tyrique Murray, Joel Tulloch, Raheem Ford and Alex Hutchinson posing with the robot that landed them the award.    

Calabar High School has won the 2020 For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology (FIRST) Tech Challenge for institutions in Jamaica.

The competition, which is open to high-school students between grades seven and 12, requires the participants to design, build, programme and operate robots and compete in a head-to-head challenge in an alliance format.

The victory for Calabar, which topped the 30 schools participating in two days of competition, culminating with the announcement on February 29, represents the institution’s first in a major robotics competition.

The team will now advance to the competition’s international round, which is scheduled for Texas in the United States of America (USA), in April.