Curious Minds Awards | Ardagh National School

Our awards

Gold Award 2026
Badge of Excellence Award 2023
Badge of Excellence Award 2021
Science and Maths Excellence Award 2019

Platinum Award

We were recognised for our continued hard work in STEM education. As part of the SFI Curious Minds Awards programme we earned the Platinum Award, the highest award achievable by primary schools under the SFI programme. We were one of fewer than 50 schools nationwide to achieve this.

As part of this award we set ourselves some unique targets for the promotion of STEM in our school. Our goal was to raise STEM awareness across the school community by increasing the frequency of exposure and the variety of focus of our STEM Showcase Days.

Building on what we know to be a successful and engaging strategy of delivering STEM projects for exhibition to a wider public audience, we hope to encourage everyone involved to engage on a more meaningful level with the STEM subjects and recognise them as part of everyday life.

To achieve our goal we will greatly increase the number of opportunities our pupils get to take part in STEM showcase events. These include:

whole-school assemblies
EU Code Week workshops
class science fair
Science Blast science fair (3rd to 6th class)
local science fairs (community and school clusters)
open science fair (individuals with open investigations)

What success looks like

For our pupils: as their confidence in STEM subjects grows, so too will their familiarity and confidence in communicating their learning. From this we expect to see increased motivation and engagement with the STEM subjects.

For our teachers: classes will be challenged to start from self-generated trigger questions, to hypothesise, predict and investigate before sharing their findings with the public or school friends. Project work in classrooms also helps implement the Digital Strategy, gives genuine context to learning, provides a range of opportunities for assessment, creates more opportunities for inclusion through group work in mixed-ability teams, and improves relationships between teachers, the wider school community and other schools.

For our parents: a greater willingness to get involved with scientific inquiry at home by asking the scientific question and following along as children work towards their next science exhibition or project; a greater recognition of what scientific exploration looks like for our pupils; and the idea that we are all capable of being scientists, by posing a question, working scientifically to uncover an answer and sharing those findings with others.

STEM podcasts

We now share our knowledge through podcasts.

Eye Eye Eye! Can we make our pupils' pupils see better? That was the question 3rd and 4th class posed for their Science Blast investigation. The scientists who judged the project in the RDS were "blown away" by the knowledge and research the class carried out. Every episode was written, presented and recorded by 3rd and 4th class.

Bats: more interesting than they are scary, according to our pupil experts. Listen to the episode.