FIVE boys from Greig Academy, a Church of England school in a disadvantaged area of north London, beat teams from 19 other schools in the UK and Ireland earlier this month to win the Vax IQ National Robotics championship in Birmingham. Umar Raja (right), Tanvir Ahmed (centre), Benedict Whitehead, and Mitchell Kingsland, all aged 12, and Max Hahn (left), 13, built their prize-winning entry with the help of a teacher, Ricardo Garcia, who runs the school's Robotics Club. They will represent the UK at the Global Championships in the United States later this year.

The team designed and programmed their robot, yet to be named, to move coloured blocks from one part of an eight-foot by four-foot play area to another, stack them as high as possible by remote control, and then to give itself a clap