Congratulations to the lower sixth students who won awards in the Cambridge Chemistry Challenge this year.
The national competition, aimed at students at the end of the first year of their A Level Chemistry course, is put together by Cambridge University and is deliberately designed to extend even the most able students in the country. 2019 is the ‘International Year of the Periodic Table’, marking 150 years since Dmitri Mendeleev first published his masterpiece and, perhaps unsurprisingly, the paper took this as its theme. As usual, the paper probed well beyond the A Level specification, forcing candidates to rely on their understanding of principles and reason their way to answers on questions, and all of the Emanuel students who entered demonstrated strong thinking skills as well as great perseverance and resilience in getting to the end of the very challenging paper.
Guy Kitchen’s gold award is a particularly notable achievement, as it placed him in the top 10% of entrants nationally – an impressive feat given that the competition is only aimed at students who are on target for an A grade at A Level. Joe Barton, Luke Bligh, Siddiq Islam and Fred Jimack all received silver awards, and Kate Goolnik achieved a copper award, all of which are excellent achievements and which, taken together, are the best overall set of awards that a cohort of Emanuel students has ever received in the competition.
Mrs Brown (Head of Science)