A COMPETITION believed to be the first of its kind in the country, which tested pupils' abilities to be concise and informative, was held in Brentwood.
Teams of three to five youngsters aged 11 and 12 from six schools took up the challenge of the Pecha-Kucha contest which is a style of fast, precise electronic presentation.
Their theme was My First Year and in just under six minutes they had to present to the judges a précis of their experiences as new secondary school students.
Sponsored by a local business, the contest was won by the team from Brentwood Ursuline Convent High School who received a digital projector.
It was donated by Paul Rolison, chief executive officer of Yellowspring Business IT Solutions, who explained: "Pecha-Kucha is a presentation style that was invented in 2003 by a group of architects who believed that presenters were taking too long to talk about over-complicated slides.
"A Pecha-Kucha presentation consists of 20 images each of which automatically progresses to the next slide after 20 seconds. It is a real skill to be able to match your verbal presentation to the collection of images.
"It's a bit of fun which has really got the children thinking hard about the best images to use to describe their experiences during their first year of secondary school, as well as the speech that they will use on the night."
Organised by the Brentwood Curriculum Leaders Group and held at Becket Keys school, the contest saw teams from the host school being awarded second place and Shenfield High School third.
A team from St Martins, Brentwood County High and Beauchamps School in Wickford shared fourth place in the competition.
