This year's Easter essay competition required Year 9 and 10 pupils to write on the topic of sustainability. The competition encouraged pupils to delve deeper into subjects of interest, fostering a passion for learning and intellectual growth beyond the classroom.
Entrants could choose to discuss the following three titles:
- History: “Empires, by their very nature, are always doomed to failure”.
- STEM: “The metals used to manufacture renewable technologies are scarce, environmentally unfriendly and difficult to extract. Governments should instead focus their efforts on initiatives that mitigate the impact of emissions”.
- Linguistics: “By 2050, 90% of currently spoken languages are in danger of becoming extinct: this is a good thing”.
Isabel (Year 10), first prize winner
Our winner, Isabel (Year 10), opted to write about Linguistics, and our runner-up, Toby (Year 10) chose History. The standard of both essays was very high. Isabel argued for the importance of learning a diverse range of languages and emphasised the positive impacts that this can have upon communication skills and wider cognitive ability. In his essay, Toby interrogated the nature of empire, comparing the colonial ventures of European nations with modern corporations.
Toby (Year 10), runner-up
Both Isabel and Toby should be extremely pleased with their competition entries. The judges unanimously agreed that their essays were the most sophisticated and well-reasoned. I was particularly impressed by their use of secondary literature: critiquing the work of other scholars is a vital skill to develop.
Mr Michael Dawson, Head of Scholarship
