BUDDING young designers and engineers turned their brain power into horsepower for a school competition.

Tanfield School, near Stanley, held a watersports challenge last Friday, with students racing mini boats.

The Year 8 pupils spent a week designing and building the vessels. The design brief was to create fast boats that would carry an egg along a three-metre water trough.

The 16 teams worked with 40 Year 5 pupils from four of Tanfield's feeder schools - Tanfield Lea Juniors, Burnopfield, Shield Row and East Stanley Primary.

The event, organised by teachers Richard Seaton and Michael Pierson, was part of Tanfield's ongoing work in the community, after it became only the third education centre in the UK to achieve specialist status for science and engineering last year.

Specialist school co-ordinator Sue Smith said: "It went fantastically well.

"The Year five pupils loved it and thanked everyone at the end, because they had had such a brilliant day."

The fibreglass hulls and troughs for the race were donated by Lamplas, a plastics firm based in Leadgate, near Consett. Prizes were awarded for the fastest boat, best graphic design on the side of the hull, and the best written evaluation of the project