Over the last few months, our eight pupils chosen to represent Emanuel in the inaugural online ‘National Reading Championship’ had been training hard at the Year Seven Lit Quiz Club. In a normal school year, we always enter two quiz events: the Kids’ Lit Quiz (in November) and the CWIZZ (in May), as they were both cancelled due to Covid-19 reasons this event organized by the National Literary Trust was a nice alternative.

There were around twenty heats across the UK, with us entering the highly competitive south London section, which featured the likes of Dulwich Prep, Latymer Upper, Eltham College, City of London Boys and Sutton Grammar. Our eight Year 7 players all had a great time and were amused by eccentric presenter ‘Mr Dilly’ who even had staff members doing dances via the Microsoft Teams live feed!

Our excellent ‘A’ Team were Elsa, Macsen, Jack-Francis and Sam, who were ably supported by our talented ‘B’ team of Carlos, Rory, Dougie and Humphrey. There were almost fifty teams in the heat and although we were confident of finishing in the top ten,  we were delighted to be placed fourth (A team) and thirteenth (B team). The scoring was very tight, and out of 100, the winners were:

1st Heston Community School ‘A’ Team- 81

2nd Heston Community School ‘B’ Team- 80

3rd Latymer Upper ‘B’ Team- 72

4th Emanuel School ‘A’ Team- 71

Although we scored very well in some rounds, if we had made cleverer use of our ‘joker’ (where points are doubled) we might have leapt to first or second place. Also, the odd very low score (such as the anagram round) really hurt us. Overall, it was a very enjoyable morning and everybody had a lot of fun. We’ll be interested to see whether this event continues beyond Covid-19 next year. Let us hope us.

The pupils are photographed with their participation certificates and were great online ambassadors for Emanuel School. Well done to all involved for a great effort.

Tony Jones (Senior Librarian)