THREE teams from a Welwyn Garden City school triumphed in a national engineering competition taking home first, second and third prizes.

Ten pupils from Stanborough School entered this year’s annual Bosch Technology Horizons Award and were tasked with coming up with ideas to help tackle the ageing population.

Year 10 students Cherry-Mae Whitehead, Katie Genever and Connie Ryan came first in a group competition, after designing an app to help elderly people find lost items.

Fifteen-year-old Katie came up with the idea of putting barcodes on household items which can be traced on a computer to show where the lost possession is.

The girls then made a 60 second video explaining how to use their app, which they submitted to the annual Bosch Technology Horizon Award competition.

“I was really shocked to find out we had won. It’s awesome,” said Connie.

“Especially as we had three teams from the school win prizes.”

Sahbi Benzid, head of IT at the school, encouraged the students to enter.

He said: “I am really proud of their achievements, they all worked really hard.

“And it is always a really good thing to see girls getting involved in engineering.”

The school also took home two other prizes, with Fleur Young, Carla Mansbridge and Bethany Carpenter taking second prize and Migle Kacenaite, Grace Appleby, Lauren Turpin and Clara Illes-Wilbourne coming third.