Students from Shepherd's Bush Win Prizes


Local winners in inter-school competitions for physics and linguistics


Some of the medal winners from the Senior Physics Challenge

Two students from Shepherd’s Bush have won prizes at recent inter-school competition.

Latymer Upper School sixth Former Saskia won a Bronze in the Senior Physics Challenge this year. She was one of 18 Sixth Formers from the school taking part and collectively they won 12 medal.

The Senior Physics Challenge for Year 12 students is an opportunity for students to stretch their problem solving skills and apply fundamental physical principles to novel situations. Over 6,000 students take part in the competition each year. Students have to take a one-hour paper that provides an excellent tool to assess and challenge students’ ability to work at a high level in Key Stage 5 and beyond. It consists of several short questions followed by one or two longer questions that test only core subject knowledge and application.

“The whole department is absolutely thrilled as these are superb results and in such a prestigious competition,” said Mr Birchmore, Head of Physics. “With lockdown it’s been a few years since we’ve had the chance to do this, so when these students said they wanted to take part I was delighted; for them to have then done so well, I am simply over the moon! Well done to Saskia and her peers, Pluto, Jaime, Balthazar, Hamza and Hugh for getting Bronze; to Sam and Ellie for silver and Ed, Daniel, Sofia and Leo who got gold – a really incredible feat!”

Esme from Shepherd’s Bush was among the 13 students from Latymer Upper School who competed in the Advanced Level competition at this year’s UK Linguistics Olympiad (UKLO) where she also won bronze. This was the highest number of entrants ever fielded by the School and they have achieved the best results the School has ever enjoyed.

The linguistics Olympiads from Latymer School
The linguistics Olympiads from Latymer School

The UKLO aims to be a fun but challenging competition in which students compete to solve problems based on some of the world’s 7,000 languages. Participants use data from a given language to crack codes and solve puzzles. It requires analytical skills and critical thinking. Linguistic Olympiads started in Moscow in the 1950s but there are now over 40 national competitions taking place every year leading up to the International competition.

For Year 11 students Adam, Rhea and Stella it was their first time entering the competition, as it was for Year 12 students, Juliette, Alexandra and Bee who all performed brilliantly. Esme and her peers Stanley, Elfreda and Sanna came away from the competition with a Bronze as did Didi who narrowly missed out on Silver by 1.2%.

Amitai (Y12) and Xane (Y13) both won Gold and qualified for Round 2 of the competition which involves a 3.5 hour exam. Candidates who do well at this stage are then selected for the UK team for the International competition.

Last year Xane achieved a high Gold award in UKLO Round 1 and was one of 51 students, out of the 1000+ who competed in the Advanced Level competition, to qualify for Round 2. In that second round he was one of the eight highest performers and qualified for the UK team who competed at the 18th International competition, hosted by Ventspils, Latvia in July 2021. Due to pandemic, 216 contestants of 54 teams representing 34 countries took part, competing remotely in their countries, making it the biggest competition in the history of IOL, in terms of the number of contestants.

“This has been the most incredible set of results and Amitai and Xane have done so incredibly well to get through to the next round,” said Mrs Collier who coordinated Latymer’s entry. “They all engaged really enthusiastically with our training sessions and I hope that many of them will have been inspired to participate next year.”

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March 28, 2022