Worthing school becomes first to win 'The Noise Oscars' award two years in a row

Students from St Oscar Romero Catholic School in Goring were crowned national champions in the Institute of Acoustics Secondary School Competition 2022 at the John Connell Awards 2022 at the Palace of Westminster on October 19.

This year's team carried out an investigation of sound levels in the school, focusing on the bells. The school won the same prize last year for its ‘soundscape walk’ of the local environment.

Dr David Waddington, professor in environmental acoustics at the Acoustic Research Centre at the University of Salford, said: "St Oscar Romero Catholic School’s winning entry is an outstanding project. This work combines a number of difficult areas of acoustics, including soundscapes, subjective testing and environmental noise mitigation.

"These students clearly worked hard and produced a highly-creditable result, and we welcome students of this calibre on the acoustics courses at the University of Salford.

"My compliments to physics teacher Mr Clarke, headmaster Mr Bryne and his staff for their extracurricular support of this exciting and inventive project. With just a little effort, this work could be made into a conference paper and would be a popular presentation at the IOA Annual Conference. I hope to see them there in Winchester in October 2023."

Peter Clarke, head of physics, said the competition had 'captured the imagination of the students' and really got them thinking about the measurement of sound.

He explained: "They mapped out sound levels across the school and used their findings to investigate a noise problem, suggesting possible solutions – a fantastic extra-curricular experience. I’m delighted that the students’ hard work over many weeks has been rewarded with this competition success.”

The awards are held by The Noise Abatement Society, a UK charity that aims to share a better understanding of sound to help relieve the physical and mental distress caused by excessive noise.

Gloria Elliott, chief executive, said: "Congratulations to the winning team of pupils at St Oscar Romero Catholic School for their highly-impressive submission, which demonstrated real depth of investigation as well as practical problem-solving skill and all beautifully produced.”

Alistair Somerville, president of the Institute of Acoustics, said the St Oscar Romero team had demonstrated 'an innovative and thorough investigation' into the sounds in their school.

He added: "Then, focusing on the school bells, they developed sound recording technology from readily available and affordable resources, produced a sound heatmap of the noise impact and recommended mitigation measures. The presentation of the findings of the project, using a website, was outstanding.”

The John Connell Awards 2022 were hosted by Worthing West MP Sir Peter Bottomley and presented by David Hill, director-general environment rural and marine, Defra.

Peter Byrne, headteacher, said: “We are incredibly proud of what our students have achieved. The sheer complexity of the project and its real-life application is both inspiring and important for our school’s development.”