The school ran the Game Changer Challenge for years 7 and 8 during the final weeks of term, a three-day program targeted at boosting design skills.

Science head teacher Peter Shea said students were taken through lessons in the design process, including coding and working with Lego's Mindstorms robotics technology, before they split into groups, worked on a project and presented their work at the end.

"One group came up with robot that cleans waterways, another group modified bacteria to digest plastic," he said.

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Mr Shea said one of the other projects was a baby doll for children going through trauma, which could detect emotions and connect to services in the event of an emergency.

"That was a pretty cool creation," he said.

"That's the beauty of doing an event like this - the kids will come up with solutions to a whole range of different problems."

Mr Shea said he was particularly pleased with students who did not normally enjoy school, but were fully engaged in their design.

"Some said it was the most amazing thing they'd ever done."