PUPILS from West Linton have just returned from conquering the world of innovation.

Despite being amongst the youngest finals, the ten-strong team from the primary school lifted the World Cup of engineering and technology in America with the prize for Innovation.

The West Linton Wasps triumphed last year at the First Lego League final in Dundee after seeing off fierce competition from teams across Scotland.

They then went on to beat the best of the UK and Ireland in London with their innovative ways of combatting real-world problems.

And now, Aedán Contier-Lawrie (11), Owen Jones (11), Jessica Levine (11), Cameron MacKay (12), Rebecca Moroney (11), Louis Myatt (12), Malcolm Rodwell (11), Logan Stewart (11), Alexander Walpole (11) and Oscar Weipers (11) have won yet again - on the world stage in St Louis.

Gail Jackson, one of the team’s coaches at the Young Engineers and Science Club at West Linton Primary, told the Peeblesshire News: “When we started on our First Lego League challenge last September we had no idea it would lead us to a World Festival in St Louis.

"We are very proud of the team and it's been a fantastic experience for the children and us, as their coaches.

"The atmosphere at the Festival was electric and the enormous venue and sheer number of teams from 80 countries across the world added to the excitement.”

First Lego League, a global science, technology, engineering and maths challenge aimed at nine to 16 year olds, tasks teams to solve real world problems with the help of a robot.

This year’s challenge, which was announced across the world last August, required young people to identify a problem in the way that waste is dealt with, investigate it and come up with an innovative solution.

They also had to design, build and program an autonomous LEGO MINDSTORMS robot to tackle a series of waste-related missions.

West Linton Wasps impressed judges in America with their innovative project, which investigated the problem of wasted vegetables from school lunches.

After finding that 60 per cent of vegetables were being wasted, the team introduced an incentive scheme where children earned tokens for eating vegetables, which earned prizes for each class.

The school has seen a 47 per cent reduction in wasted vegetables and hopes to extend this scheme to other local schools.

Richard Pering, Education Manager for First Lego League at the Institution of Engineering and Technology, added: “The West Linton Wasps should be very proud of themselves – it’s fantastic that their innovative project was recognised at the global final.

“The IET runs competitions like the First Lego League in order to show young people how creative, exciting and rewarding engineering can be.

"In order to tackle the engineering skills gap we need more graduates to enter the profession, and this can only happen if more school-age children are attracted to, and choose to study STEM subjects – competitions like FLL are therefore vital.”

The West Linton Wasps were amongst the youngest teams who had reached the finals in America.

They scooped second place overall in the Innovative Solution awards for their waste project.

And, of the 29,000 teams who entered, their programmed Lego robot ranked 23rd overall.

A huge fundraising effort was launched by parents and friends of the pupils after the Wasps won the UK finals, in order to send them to St Louis.

And the parent-led Young Engineers Club has come in for praise from head-teacher Jill Doyle. Jill told us: "West Linton Primary School is proud of its developing partnership with parents.

"Their parent led Young Engineers Club is an excellent example of partnership that has resulted in children achieving excellence at international levels."