School_Matters_Issue_34

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PVI’S PHYSICS OLYMPIAD GOLD

The British Physics Olympiad is a national competition designed to encourage the study of physics and to recognise excellence in young physicists. This year’s competition attracted 4,710 entries and a number of IPS pupils from PVI took part with great success. Particular congratulations go to Alexander Hooper who placed in the top 18% of entrants nationally and received a Gold Award. There were no fewer than 16 Silver Awards to PVI pupils and they are listed here in alphabetical order: Alex Bailey, Olivia Brett, Phoebe Groome, Isla Heaton, Saskia Jenkins, Daniel Korhonen Cuestas, Natalie Lees, Kareem Mansour, Jacob Martin, Lynch McPherson, Thomas Merriman, Matthew Michelmore, Joshua O'Donnell, Augustinas Pitkauskas, Romilly Travers, Yueyang Wang. In addition, four pupils received Bronze Awards: Olivia Kenny, Scarlett McKittrick, Odessa Rontogiannis, Lauren Shaw. Well done to all these PVI pupils on their impressive achievement. Mr Greg Kerr, Teacher of Physics

Percy Scott and Louis Titchen, UVI

UVI CHEMISTS WIN OLYMPIAD SILVERS Many congratulations to UVIs Percy Scott and Louis Titchen for achieving Silver Certificates in the 53rd Annual Chemistry Olympiad. It's a fiendishly difficult test and we applaud their achievement. Indeed, we can report that Percy was just one mark from a Gold award. Mrs Lizzie Wright, Teacher of Chemistry

Alex Hooper, PVI

GENDER BALANCE IN COMPUTING Computing and CompSci are subjects that have traditionally struggled to achieve a gender balance in the composition of their student cohorts. Like certain other STEM subjects, fewer girls than boys tend to choose to pursue tech-based subjects into GCSE and A-level and therefore carry forward their studies to university and the countless opportunities of the professional worlds beyond. This Summer Term, our Senior 8 pupils will be playing an important part in helping to understand why this may be the case. We will use our scheduled Computing classes to take part in the ‘Informal Learning’ project. This initiative, which is funded by the Department for Education, sees the

we shall be trialling some new resources through an ‘Apps for Good’ course to promote engagement and subject uptake. It is going to be an exciting term and I hope that our contribution to this valuable research will offer insight into what traditionally has been a difficult problem to solve. Miss Amy Cartwright, Head of Digital Innovation and Learning

Raspberry Pi Foundation combine forces with the National Centre for Computing Education and IPS will be one of the participating schools. Together, we shall explore ways of engaging more female pupils in order to increase the number of girls selecting Computer Science at GCSE and A-level. It has been suggested that addressing this issue early in a child’s education is important. In this project,