Share

Success in unusual circumstances!

Senior School Junior School


Current Lower Sixth achieve Bablake’s best ever results in the most unusual circumstances!

In the first week back after half term all of the current Lower Sixth sat the exam for the Royal Society of Biology’s Intermediate Olympiad competition.

In what must be a first, they all took the exam online at home whilst they were invigilated remotely via MS Teams, using cameras and microphones to ensure they were silent and on task. In most instances a family member was also present in the room with them to invigilate by monitoring their screen.

The exam tests their full knowledge of the AS Biology syllabus as well as wider biological knowledge. There were 8750 candidates from 498 schools participating from around the world.

Bablake’s record breaking students achieved 1 Gold, 5 Silver and 6 Bronze awards in this prestigious competition, with an additional 3 receiving Highly Commended and another 7 Commended.

Ben Sawyer, was our best performer scoring an impressive 53 out of 68 earning him a Gold Award, placing him in the top 5% of all participants.

Ben's thoughts on the competition and format this year are insightful, "At first the exam was surprisingly easy, with two out of the five sections being quite basic content. However, it very rapidly picked up the pace by setting questions that not only took longer work out, but also required application of existing knowledge and some guesswork. It was hard not to get bogged down in these longer questions and as a result I only just finished in time."

"Taking the course from at home also added some difficulty to the test, as there was a lot of background noise generated from my family and some noisy neighbours! Although, a benefit is that I certainly felt more comfortable taking the test in a familiar setting which made me a bit more relaxed."

"I was very pleased with my result and I certainly didn’t anticipate receiving a High Gold and coming first in my year group! The experience has definitely given me a sense of hope for the rest of my Biology A-level and raised my standards towards achieving a top grade."

Well done everyone on your hard work and resilience in these changing times!



You may also be interested in...