St John’s students are successful in national robotics competition

On Thursday 26^th and Friday 27^th June 2025, 14 Year 10 students from St John’s Marlborough prepared to do battle against 63 other robotics teams in the First Tech Challenge UK National Championships, held at the Copper Box Arena, London. The team, known as the Botonauts, had competed in the South-East Regional Qualifiers of the competition in March 2025, winning the Control Award, coming runners-up in the Inspire Award and captaining one of the finalist alliances – taking them through to the National Championships in June. 

The competition required teams to design and build robots, which were set tasks and problem-solving exercises to complete. Teams were also judged on the design and build of their robot, coding, control, its ability to solve problems, team presentation, their portfolio, fundraising and social media campaigns. The team was grateful to be sponsored by TH White Group, who helped support the team financially, and also ran a successful GoFundMe campaign to help raise funds to contribute towards the purchase of robot parts, as well as the cost of the trip to London.

At the National Championships, the Botonauts were up against teams from schools across the UK, many with larger budgets and more experience.  They commenced the competition playing in random alliances with other teams from the Pacific Division of the competition, where they won all five of their matches to come joint top of their division.  However, due to a better autonomous score, the Botonauts were crowned divisional winners. 

The Botonauts then went into the divisional playoffs, where, as the top ranked team they were able to choose their own alliance. Choosing to ally with Wilsobotics from Sutton, they went on to win all three of their playoff matches, putting them through to the grand finals against the winners of the Atlantic division and reigning champions: teams Phoenix and Norwood Industries. They played out two tightly fought matches, coming up slightly short, but were still delighted to be crowned FTC UK Championship Runners-Up 2024-2025!!

Richard Jarvis, Head of Computing at St John’s, said: “The students are a real credit to themselves and the school! They’ve worked so hard on this all year, learning so many new skills and really growing as both individuals and a team. They came into the competition with no expectations, always doubting themselves and questioning whether they had made the right design choices and whether their ideas would be competitive. But, by the end, they were disappointed that they didn’t win the national finals, against an opposition that had been there and done it all before. I’m so excited to see what we can achieve next year and am really looking forward to having members of the team back to act as mentors for the incoming year 10s. Well done to everyone – their hard work and dedication really paid off!”

Sarah Wilson, Vice Principal, said: “We’re immensely proud of the Botonauts for reaching the finals of the FIRST Tech Challenge UK. Their success reflects months of commitment, problem-solving, and technical ingenuity. To finish as national runners-up against such tough competition is an outstanding achievement for our students and our school.”

Thank you to Mr Jarvis, Head of Computing, for dedicating his time to this project, and to everyone who has supported the team throughout their journey.  St John’s are extremely proud of the Year 10 students; they have shown dedication, teamwork and innovation and are already planning to help mentor next year’s new recruits and encourage even more students into STEM at St. John’s in the future.”