Our UVI Chemistry students recently sat a gruelling two-hour paper for this year's Chemistry Olympiad from the Royal Society of Chemistry. Then, last week, the Royal Society of Chemistry announced the shocking grade boundaries for the competition which was sat by nearly 15,000 students from across the UK.

If you type into Google 'How hard is the Chemistry Olympiad?' the answer comes back as: 
'The questions are difficult – they require students to apply their knowledge, solve problems and make educated guesses. The key is not to give up.'

And that’s the reason we ask our students to do it. It’s good to attempt things that you will find difficult as it builds resilience.

To show how hard it was just over 8% of all students who wrote the paper this year achieved a Gold award – and the score needed for that was only 37%!

This means that it was an excellent achievement for our girls in UVI, seven of whom achieved a Bronze award and the following five girls achieving a Silver award:

• Marybi A
• Eloise F
• Thea G
• Beam K
• Pippa R

Despite knowing how challenging the paper could be, we also had two students in the LVI who voluntarily sat the paper in January. Congratulations to Sharon Z for achieving a Silver award and Beatrice C who achieved a Bronze award.  They will have the chance to improve on this next year and maybe the questions won't be so hard!

Mrs Carol Wilson, Head of Chemistry