A pupil from Whitland's Dyffryn Taf School recently made a shortlist of the top 13 young engineers in the UK.

Year 12 student Alison Sharratt designed a project she called 'bright sparks' which is a battery condition tester and attended the WCSIM Young Engineer for Britain Mentoring day at the National Physical Laboratory in Teddington in November last year where there were mentors to help students with their ideas.

This week, she travelled to the NEC in Birmingham to set-up her display and project and be judged by two sets of judges with a five-minute speech and 15-minute question and answer session about her project.

Alison was also able to talk to other students and teachers at the Big Bang Fair at the NEC

"Although she didn't come away with the top prize of a week in LA to compete in the World Young Engineer compertition, Alison did very well as this was the first time she had done anything like this and it was quite stressful, but she made us very proud parents," said her mother Margaret.

"The Duke of York also visited the Young Engineer stand and met each student and spoke to them about their projects which was the highlight of the day for them," she added.

Alison was the only student from South Wales to go through to the Nationals and received a medal and a certificate from the chairman of the Young Engineer competition.