Competitions
We hold a range of competitions for students throughout the year, including our flagship annual TEXPO where students from local schools showcase their work and compete for prizes, and other projects and online activities. Find out more and enter here.
For Primary and Secondary Students
Taking a camera or your phone and shooting a picture is an easy. But how about, when composing your image, you think about how your picture might be used to discover some aspect of science and engineering?
From your camera or mobile phone to a flower or a rainbow, from a bubble to radio mast, from smoke to light, from microscopy to astronomy, everywhere in our modern world we are facing science and engineering wonders that make our lives easier and more fun. This is the fifth year of our competition and we have had some outstanding winners.
Science meets Art – Our annual photographic competition aims at creating an opportunity for you to creatively express what you observe within science, in pictures, and we hope that this will get you to explore the visual aspects of STEAM through the art and science of photography and capture images that demonstrate and communicate STEAM concepts and phenomena.
This year 2024,
the focus of the competition is on:
"Time"
(Including everything from clocks, hourglasses, sundials to biological clocks, sunsets, stars, ancient monuments and more!)
We want you to take photographs (up to 3 entries per person) that express what Time means to you or how it impacts health or our environment, including the negative or positive roles of technology. Each photograph must be accompanied with a short plain language explanation (not more than 50 words) of the thoughts behind your photograph.
TEXPO Schools' Competition: Fri 21 June 2024, Anglia Ruskin University
We are pleased to confirm the date for the 2024 CSES Schools' Technology Exhibition (TEXPO).
The dates will be as follows:
- The TEXPO will take place on Friday 21 June 2024.
- The awards evening will take place on one evening of Thursday 11 July 2024.
Find out more about the competition here.
We are open for early-bird entries – click here to enter the TEXPO now – and will send further details in the coming weeks.
In the meantime, remember to enter this year's Big Bang competition!
From passion to project
The Big Bang Competition is open for entries! Inspire students to work together, problem solve and get creative with science, engineering and technology. New for this year, celebrate your students' inner innovator with brand-new technology prizes, supported by Siemens.
Entries will close on 27 March at 5pm so you've got plenty of time to start a project!
Find out more about The Competition and how to enter online.
A huge thanks to everyone who took part in our 2022-2023 schools' project Giving Voice: Stories of STE(A)M through the technology of radio, which saw several teams of students produce podcasts and posters about influential figures from the world of Electronic Communication.
We are pleased to announce that the podcast episodes are now available to listen to, and the prize winners are as follows.
Head to cses.podbean.com to listen to the episodes!
Congratulations to everyone who won an award at the 2023 CSES TEXPO, which took place on Friday 30 June 2023 at Anglia Ruskin University.
Read more: 2023 TEXPO results and National Saturday Club awards
Images on the theme of "Electronic Communication"
Thank you to everyone who entered our 2023 Photographic Competition on the theme of Electronic Communication. This year, we received some particularly witty and poignant entries that we very much enjoyed reviewing!
You can see all of the photographs at our web gallery here.
Congratulations to our winners, whose entries are shown below. Prizes this year were £50 (first) and £20 (second) in both the primary and secondary age categories.
We are pleased to advise that our Centenary Photographic Competition 2023, this year on the theme of Electronic Communication, is now open until Friday 23 June 2023 to allow for further entries.
We want you to take photographs (up to 3 entries) that express what electronic communication means to you, or how it impacts health and environment (for better or worse).
The competition is open to primary or secondary aged students living or educated in Essex. We will be looking for photos that are creative in their approach, with an innovative angle on the subject or a creative interpretation of the themes.
There are two categories of entry: one for primary school students and one for those at secondary level. Cash prizes are available!
You can read the full details here or click below to submit an entry.
Click here to submit your entry »
Happy snapping!
- TEXPO 2023 – enter now
- Now open: Big Bang and TEXPO 2023
- TEXPO 2023: Save the Date
- Centenary Photographic Competition 2023: Electronic Communication
- The Big Bang 2023 is open
- Photographic Competition 2022 winners announced
- TEXPO 2022
- 2022 TEXPO results
- TEXPO 2022 and Photo Competition – ONE WEEK left to enter!
- Big Bang 2022 deadline extended