During the Autumn Term, students from Years 8 and 9 took part in the scholarship programme that was run by The Brilliant Club. Students learned about different topics in a series of university style tutorials led by a PhD tutor in their specialist field.

Here’s what Tejas Heejebu (9C2) said, “At the start of the year we were introduced to our PhD tutor who told us more specifically about the course we would be studying, which was ‘Protecting genetic information and confidentiality: The challenges ahead’. We had 5 tutorials, which were each about different topics that could have been the main points of the essay we were going to write at the end of the programme. Tutorial one was about ‘Medical privacy’, the second was about ‘Freedom of the press’, the third about ‘Informed consent’ and the fourth about ‘Genetic information and confidentiality’. Our fifth one was preparation for the essay we were going to write over the Christmas holidays. We picked one of the topics and used it for an ethical dilemma argument. I did mine on ‘Freedom of the press’. After the Christmas holidays we got our results back in university grades and went on a trip to Christchurch College in Oxford University. Overall, it was an amazing experience.”

The photos are from the graduation day in the week before half term where students went to celebrate their hard work and dedication throughout the programme. They all did incredibly well and every student achieved either a 2:1 or a 1^st, which is outstanding. A huge well done to everyone!

Mr Hill

TEAM MATHS CHALLENGE

On Thursday 13 February, a team of four excellent mathematicians from Year 8 and 9 travelled to Queen Anne’s School in Caversham to take part in the regional round of the UK Mathematics Trust’s Team Maths Challenge. The competition was fierce with 19 local schools competing to get through to the national final. Sam, Josef, Nila, and Tom took part in four gruelling rounds of difficult Mathematics and teamwork.

First up was the Group Round, with ten questions to answer as a team of 4. This was quickly followed by the Crossnumber, where the team was split into pairs with one pair having the across clues and one pair having the down clues and only allowed to communicate through their adjudicating teacher. At this point we were listed as one of the six schools at the top within only a few marks of each other!

After lunch we had the trickiest round – the Shuttle. They again had to work in pairs, with each answer required to answer the next question, and under a time limit with a bonus for finishing quickly. The day finished with the Relay which was definitely the most fun round. The pairs were spread around the room, then pair A had to answer a question and run it to their teacher to check the answer before running the next question to pair B for them to answer and so on. I’m sure you can imagine the ensuing chaos with people running all over the place! There was a fantastic atmosphere of excitement and collaboration in the room.

It was then a nail-biting wait for the results to be calculated. We came in 4^th place, which is an excellent achievement against such strong competition across 19 schools. A big congratulations to Sam, Josef, Nila, and Tom who greatly enjoy their day of maths!

INTERMEDIATE MATHS CHALLENGE

On Wednesday 29 January, 155 of our best mathematicians from Year 9, 10 and 11 took part in the Intermediate Maths Challenge competition run by the UK Mathematics Trust. They faced a tricky paper of 25 multiple choice questions, stretching their minds across a wide variety of Mmathematical topics. Look to the end of this article to find some example questions from the paper (question 7 was very popular!). The following students achieved certificate awards for their excellent efforts:

Gold

Amelie Goodwin (Best in School), Timmy Wraight (Best in School), Joe Herriman, Ben Ransom (Best in Year), Benjamin Lawson, Sam Taylor (Best in Year), Louis Simpson, Misbah Shahul Hameed, Henry Chalk, Gamya Bayyana, Bartosz Opitek, Robert Blakeley, Wilf Busby, Rishik Kar, Maxime Gore, Romain Chow, Souborni Sarkar, Zac Wraight, Isaac Johnson, Ciara Langrell, Jimmy Pennock, Hansika Bolli, Casper Nolan, Isambard Wind-Mozley, Charlie Morse.

Silver

Joanie Seymour, Joe Hill, Samuel Mak De Casa, James Alder, Penelope Starrs, Oliver Comber, Keiyona Ghai, Ffion Pritchard, Charley Allum, Kruthi Chebrolu, Joseph Richards, Ruby Shepherd, Adam Brear, Jamie Fry, Isla Clare, Amos Fitch, Florence Chalk, Shreeya Dey, Lauren Bailey, Shreeya Agarwala, Sam Kirby, Sofia Hughes, Shawn Ramos, Eva Braithwaite, Bella Jones, Lachlan Cameron, Bella Meir, Peter Essex-Lopresti, Frederick Johnstone, Harshit Raina, Josef Sutton, Eleanor Curtis, Vedha Krishnan, Millie Taylor, Louisa Fisher, Elizabeth Mearkle-Mist, Phoebe Mortimore, Luca Forrester, Saanvi Nirania, Deivis Bodeci, Polly Kerr, Talha Irfan, Callum Wilding.

Bronze

Madeleine Hall, Daniel Wooldridge, Carmen Collins, Vicky Cox, Tejas Heejebu, Chaitra Mandali, Elly Wong, Max Farrow, Parinav Madduru, Pippa Owen, Kaiden Bailey, Yudeesh Balachandran, Praket Bimbra, Ellena Clare, Paige Warren, Maria Doney, Dhairya Joshi, Robert Hall, James Lawson, Will Heywood, James Higgs, James Dearing, Caitlin Atkin, Holly Mcclellan, Amy Oliver, Elian Besson, Tom Bibin, Abigail Marshall, Luke Kingston, Chris Broadfoot, Gauravi Deegwal, Ranvir Tomar, Rufus Epsom, Martha Waterfall, Erin Cameron.

And here are some fun questions for you to try!

maths challenge questions